With the sentence of the Cologne Communists in 1852, the curtain falls on the first period of the independent German workers' movement. Today this period is almost forgotten. Yet it lasted from 1836 to 1852 and, with the spread of German workers abroad, the movement developed in almost all civilised countries. Nor is that all. The present-day international workers' movement is in substance a direct continuation of the German movement of that time, which was the first international workers' movement ever, and which brought forth many of those who took on the leading role in the International Working Men's Association. And the theoretical principles that the Communist League had inscribed on its banner in the Communist Manifesto of 1847 constitute today the strongest international bond of the entire proletarian movement in both Europe and America.
Up to now there has been only one main source for a coherent history of that movement. This is the so-called Black Book, Die
Communisten-Verschwörungen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, by Wermuth and Stieber, Berlin, two parts, 1853 and 1854.[182] This sorry effort fabricated by two of the most contemptible police scoundrels of our century, which bristles with deliberate falsifications, still today serves as the final source for all non-communist writings about that period.[183]
What I am able to give here is only a sketch, and even this only in so far as the League itself is concerned; only what is absolutely necessary to understand the Revelations. I hope that some day I shall have the opportunity to work on the rich material collected by Marx and myself on the history of that glorious period of the youth of the international workers' movement.
* * *
In 1836 the most extreme, chiefly proletarian elements of the secret democratic-republican Outlaws' League, which had been founded by German refugees in Paris in 1834, split off and formed the new secret League of the Just. The parent League, in which only the most sleepy-headed elements à la Jakob Venedey remained soon fell asleep altogether: when in 1840 the police scented out a few sections in Germany, it was hardly a shadow of its former self. The new League, on the contrary, developed comparatively rapidly. Originally it was a German offshoot of the French worker-communism reminiscent of Babouvism [184] that was taking shape in Paris at about the same time; community of goods was demanded as the necessary consequence of "equality". The aims were those of the Parisian secret societies of the time: half propaganda association, half conspiracy, Paris, however, always being regarded as the focus of revolutionary action, although preparation for occasional putsches in Germany was by no means excluded. But as Paris remained the decisive battleground, the League was at that time actually not much more than the German branch of the French secret societies, notably the Société des saisons led by Blanqui and Barbes, with which close links were maintained. The French went into action on May 12, 1839; the sections of the League marched with them and were thus embroiled in the common defeat.[185]
Of the Germans, Karl Schapper and Heinrich Bauer were arrested; Louis Philippe's government contented itself with deport-ing them after a fairly long term of imprisonment.[186] Both went to London. Schapper came from Weilburg in Nassau and while a student of forestry at Giessen in 1832 had joined in the conspiracy organised by Georg Büchner; he had taken part in the storming of the Frankfurt constable station on April 3, 1833,[187] had escaped abroad and in February 1834 joined Mazzini's march on Savoy.[188]
Of gigantic stature, resolute and energetic, always ready to risk civil existence and life, he was a model of the professional revolutionary with the role he played in the thirties. In spite of a certain sluggishness of thought, he was by no means incapable of superior theoretical understanding, as is proved by his development from "demagogue" [189] to Communist, and he then held all the more rigidly to what he had once come to recognise. Precisely on that account his revolutionary passion sometimes got the better of his understanding, but he always realised his mistake in hindsight and openly acknowledged it. He was a true man and what he did for the founding of the German workers' movement will not be forgotten.
Heinrich Bauer, from Franconia, was a shoemaker; a lively, alert, witty little fellow, in whose little body, however, also lay hidden much shrewdness and determination.
Having arrived in London, where Schapper, who had been a compositor in Paris, now tried to earn his living as a language teacher, the two of them again joined together the broken threads of alliance and made London the centre of the League. They were joined here, if not already earlier in Paris, by Joseph Moll, a watchmaker from Cologne, a medium-sized Hercules — how often did Schapper and he victoriously defend the entrance to a hall against hundreds of onrushing opponents — a man who was at least the equal of his two comrades in energy and determination, and intellectually superior to both of them. Not only was he a born diplomat, as the success of his numerous trips on various missions proved; he was also more capable of theoretical insight. I came to know all three of them in London in 1843. They were the first revolutionary proletarians whom I had seen, and however far apart our views were at that time in details — for I still bore, as against their narrow-minded egalitarian communism,(1) a goodly dose of just as narrow-minded philosophical arrogance — I shall never forget the deep impression that these three real men made upon me, who was still to become a man at that time.
In London, as to a lesser degree in Switzerland, they had the benefit of freedom of association and assembly. The legally functioning German Workers' Educational Society, which still exists, was founded as early as February 7, 1840.[190] The Society served the League as a recruiting ground for new members, and since, as always, the Communists were the most active and intelligent members of the Society, it was a matter of course that its leadership lay entirely in the hands of the League. The League soon had several communities, or, as they were then still called, "lodges", in London. The same obvious tactics were followed in Switzerland and elsewhere. Where workers' associations could be founded, they were utilised in like manner. Where this was forbidden by law, one joined choral societies, gymnastics societies and the like. Contacts were to a large extent maintained by members who were continually travelling back and forth; they also, when required, served as emissaries. In both respects the League obtained lively support through the wisdom of the governments which, by resorting to deportation, converted any objectionable worker — and in nine cases out of ten he was a member of the League — into an emissary.
The spread of the restored League was considerable. Notably in Switzerland, Weitling, August Becker (a highly gifted man who, however, like so many Germans, came to grief through his innate instability of character) and others created a strong organisation more or less pledged to Weitling's communist system. This is not the place to criticise the communism of Weitling. But as regards its significance as the first independent theoretical stirring of the German proletariat, I still today subscribe to Marx's words in the Paris Vorwärts] of 1844: "Where among the" (German) "bourgeoisie — including its philosophers and learned writers — is to be found a book about the emancipation of the bourgeoisie— political emancipation — similar to Weitling's work: Garantien der Harmonie und Freiheit? It is enough to compare the petty, faint-hearted mediocrity of German political literature with this vehement and brilliant literary début of the German workers, it is enough to compare these gigantic infant shoes of the proletariat with the dwarfish, worn-out political shoes of the bourgeoisie, and one is bound to prophesy that the German Cinderella will one day have the figure of an athlete."(2) This athlete's figure confronts us today, although still far from being fully grown.
Numerous sections existed in Germany too; by the nature of things they were of a transient character, but those coming into existence more than made up for those folding up. Only after seven years, in late 1846, did the police discover traces of the League in Berlin (Mentel) and Magdeburg (Beck), without being in a position to follow them further.
In Paris, Weitling, still there in 1840, likewise gathered the scattered elements together again before he left for Switzerland.[191]
The tailors formed the central force of the League. German tailors were everywhere: in Switzerland, in London, in Paris. In the last-named city, German was so much the prevailing tongue in this trade that I was acquainted there in 1846 with a Norwegian tailor who had travelled directly by sea from Drontheim to France and in the space of eighteen months had learned hardly a word of French but had acquired an excellent knowledge of German. Two of the Paris communities in 1847 consisted predominantly of tailors, one of cabinet makers.
After the centre of gravity had shifted from Paris to London, a new feature came to the fore: from being German, the League gradually became international. In the Workers' Society there were, besides Germans and Swiss, also members of all those nationalities for whom German served as the chief means of communication with foreigners, notably, therefore, Scandinavians, Dutch, Hun-garians, Czechs, Southern Slavs, also Russians and Alsatians. In 1847 the regular attendants even included an English grenadier of the Guards in uniform. The Society soon called itself the Communist Workers' Educational Society, and the membership cards bore the inscription "All Men are Brothers", in at least twenty languages, though not without mistakes here and there. Like the open Society, so also the secret League soon took on a more international character; at first in a restricted sense, practically through the varied nationalities of its members, theoretically through the realisation that any revolution, to be victorious, must be a European one. It did not go any further as yet; but the foundations were there.
Close contact was maintained with the French revolutionaries through the London refugees, comrades-in-arms of May 12, 1839. Similarly with the more radical Poles. The official Polish émigrés, as also Mazzini, were, of course, opponents rather than allies. The English Chartists, on account of the specific English character of their movement, were disregarded as not revolutionary. The London leaders of the League came into contact with them only later, through me.
In other ways, too, the character of the League had altered with events. Although the League still looked upon Paris — and at that time quite rightly — as the mother city of the revolution, it had nevertheless cast off the dependence of the Paris conspirators. The spread of the League raised its self-confidence. There was a feeling that more and more roots were being struck in the German working class and that these German workers were historically destined to be the standard-bearers of the workers of the North and East of Europe. In Weitling there was to be found a communist theoretician who could be boldly placed at the side of his contemporary French rivals. Finally, the experience of May 12 had taught them that for the time being there was nothing more to be gained by attempted putsches. And if every event was still explained as a sign of the approaching storm, if the old, semi-conspiratorial rules were still preserved intact, that was mainly the fault of the old revolutionary defiance, which was already beginning to collide with the sounder views that were gaining headway.
However, the social doctrine of the League, no matter how poorly defined it was, contained a very great defect, but one that had its roots in the conditions themselves. The members, insofar as they were workers at all, were almost exclusively real artisans. Even in the big metropolises, the man who exploited them was usually only a small master. The exploitation of tailoring on a large scale, of what is now called the manufacture of off-the-peg clothing, by the conversion of handicraft tailoring into a domestic industry working for a big capitalist, was at that time only just making its appearance even in London. On the one hand, the exploiter of these artisans was a small master; on the other hand, they all hoped ultimately to become small masters themselves. And besides, a host of inherited guild notions still clung to the German artisan at that time. The greatest honour is due to them, in that they, who were themselves not yet full proletarians but only an appendage of the petty bourgeoisie, an appendage which was in the transition to becoming the modern proletariat and which did not yet stand in direct conflict with the bourgeoisie, that is, with big capital — in that these artisans were capable of instinctively anticipating their future development and of constituting themselves, even if not yet with full consciousness, as the party of the proletariat. But it was also inevitable that their old handicraft prejudices were a stumbling block to them at every moment, whenever it was a question of criticising existing society in detail, that is, of investigating economic facts. And I do not believe there was a single man in the whole League at that time who had ever read a book on political economy. But that mattered little; for the time being "equality", "brotherhood" and "justice" helped them to surmount every theoretical obstacle.
Meanwhile a second, essentially different communism had developed alongside that of the League and of Weitling. In Manchester it had been tangibly brought home to me that the economic facts which have so far played no role or only a contemptible one in historiography are, at least in the modern world, a decisive historical force; that they form the basis for the emergence of the present-day class antagonisms; that these class antagonisms, in the countries where they have become fully developed by dint of large-scale industry, hence especially in England, are in their turn the basis for the formation of political parties, party struggles, and thus of all political history. Marx had not only arrived at the same view, but had already, in the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher (1844), generalised it to the effect that it is not the state which conditions and regulates civil society at all, but civil society which conditions and regulates the state, and, consequently, that policy and its history are to be explained from the economic relations and their development, and not the other way round. When I visited Marx in Paris in the summer of 1844,(3) our complete agreement in all theoretical fields became evident and our joint work dates from that time. When, in the spring of 1845, we met again in Brussels, Marx had already fully developed his materialist theory of history in its main features from the above-mentioned foundations, and we now applied ourselves to the detailed elaboration of the newly won outlook in the most varied directions.
This discovery, which revolutionised the science of history and, as we have seen, is essentially the work of Marx — a discovery in which I can claim for myself only a very small share — was, however, of immediate importance for the workers' movement of the time. Communism among the French and Germans, Chartism among the English, now no longer appeared as something accidental which could just as well not have occurred. These movements now presented themselves as a movement of the modern oppressed class, the proletariat, as more or less developed forms of its historically necessary struggle against the ruling class, the bourgeoisie; as forms of class struggle, but distinguished from all earlier class struggles by this one thing: that the present-day oppressed class, the proletariat, cannot achieve its emancipation without at the same time emancipating society as a whole from division into classes and, therefore, from class struggles. And communism now no longer meant the concoction, by means of the imagination, of a social ideal as perfect as possible, but insight into the nature, the conditions and the consequent general aims of the struggle waged by the proletariat.
Now, we were by no means of the opinion that the new scientific results should be confided in large tomes exclusively to the "learned" world. Quite the contrary. We were both of us already deeply involved in the political movement and possessed a certain following in the educated world, especially of Western Germany, and abundant contact with the organised proletariat. It was our duty to provide a scientific substantiation for our view, but it was equally important for us to win over the European, and in the first place the German, proletariat to our conviction. As soon as we had become clear in our own minds, we set to work. We founded a German Workers' Society in Brussels[192] and took over the Deutsche-Brüsseler-Zeitung, which served us as an organ up to the February Revolution. We kept in touch with the revolutionary section of the English Chartists through Julian Harney, the editor of the movement's central organ, The Northern Star, to which I was a contributor. We entered likewise into a sort of cartel with the Brussels democrats (Marx was vice-president of the Democratic Association[193]) and with the French Social-Democrats of the
Réforme, which I supplied with news of the English and German movements. In short, our connections with the radical and proletarian organisations and press organs were quite what one could wish.
Our relations with the League of the Just were as follows: The existence of the League was, of course, known to us; in 1843 Schapper had suggested that I join it, which I at that time naturally refused to do. However, we not only kept up our continuous correspondence with the Londoners, but remained on still closer terms with Dr. Ewerbeck, the then leader of the Paris communities. Without occupying ourselves with the League's internal affairs, we nevertheless learnt of every important happen-ing. On the other hand, we influenced the theoretical views of the most important members of the League by word of mouth, by letter and through the press. For this purpose we also made use of various lithographed circulars, which we dispatched to our friends and correspondents throughout the world on particular occasions when we were concerned with the internal affairs of the Communist Party that was in the process of formation. In these, the League itself was sometimes involved. Thus, a young Westphalian student, Hermann Kriege, who went to America, posed there as an emissary of the League and associated himself with the crazy Harro Harring for the purpose of using the League to turn South America upside down. He founded a paper(4) in which, in the name of the League, he preached an effusive communism of starry-eyed love, based on "love" and overflowing with love. Against this we let fly with a circular(5) that did not fail to have its effect. Kriege vanished from the League scene.
Later, Weitling came to Brussels. But he was no longer the naïve young journeyman-tailor who, astonished at his own talents, was trying to clarify in his own mind just what a communist society would look like. He was now the great man, persecuted by the envious on account of his superiority, who scented rivals, secret enemies and traps everywhere — the prophet, driven from country to country, who carried a prescription for the realisation of heaven on earth ready-made in his pocket, and who imagined that everybody was out to steal it from him. He had already fallen out with the members of the League in London; and even in Brussels, where particularly Marx and his wife treated him with almost superhuman forbearance, he could get along with nobody. So he soon afterwards went to America to try out his role of prophet there.
All these circumstances contributed to the quiet revolution that was taking place in the League, and especially among the leaders in London. The inadequacy of the conception of communism held hitherto, both the simplistic French egalitarian communism and that of Weitling, became more and more clear to them. The tracing of communism back to early Christianity introduced by Weitling — no matter how brilliant certain details to be found in his Evangelium eines armen Sünders—had resulted in the movement in Switzerland being delivered to a large extent into the hands, first of fools like Albrecht, and then of exploiting fake prophets like Kuhlmann. The "true socialism" dealt in by a few writers of fiction — a translation of French socialist phraseology into corrupt Hegelian German, and sentimental starry-eyed love (see the section on German or "true", socialism in the Communist Manifesto*)—that Kriege and the study of the said literature introduced in the League was bound to disgust the old revolutionaries of the League, if only because of its slobbering feebleness. In contrast to the untenability of the previous theoretical views, and in contrast to the practical aberrations resulting therefrom, it was realised more and more in London that Marx and I were right in our new theory. This understanding was undoubtedly promoted by the fact that among the London leaders there were now two men who were considerably superior in their capacity for theoretical perception to those previously mentioned: the miniature painter Karl Pfänder from Heilbronn and the tailor Georg Eccarius from Thuringia.* Suffice it to say that in the spring of 1847 Moll visited Marx in Brussels and immediately afterwards myself in Paris, and invited us repeatedly, in the name of his comrades, to join the League. He reported that they were as much convinced of the general correctness of our views as of the need to free the League from the old conspiratorial traditions and forms. Should we join, we would be given an opportunity of expounding our critical communism before a congress of the League in a manifesto, which would then be published as the manifesto of the League; we would likewise be able to contribute our quota towards the replacement of the obsolete League organisation by one in keeping with the new times and aims.
We entertained no doubt that an organisation within the German working class was necessary, if only for propaganda purposes, and that this organisation, in so far as it were not merely local in character, could only be a secret one, even outside Germany. Now, there already existed exactly such an organisation in the shape of the League. What we previously objected to in this League was now relinquished as erroneous by the representatives of the League themselves; we were even invited to cooperate in the work of reorganisation. Could we say no? Certainly not. Therefore, we joined the League; Marx founded a League community in Brussels from among our close friends, while I attended the three Paris communities.
In the summer of 1847, the first League congress took place in London, at which W. Wolff represented the Brussels and I the Paris communities. First of all the congress carried out the reorganisation of the League. Whatever remained of the old mystical names dating back to the conspiratorial period was now also abolished; the League now consisted of communities, circles, leading circles, a Central Authority and a Congress, and henceforth called itself the "Communist League". "The aim of the League is the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the rule of the proletariat, the abolition of the old bourgeois society which rests on the antagonism of classes, and the foundation of a new society without classes and without private property"—thus ran the first article.(6) The organisation itself was thoroughly democratic, with the General Council of which the following old League members were to be found, among others: Eccarius, Pfänder, Lessner, Lochner, Marx and myself. Eccarius subsequently devoted himself exclusively to the English trade-union movement.
elective and removable authorities. This alone barred all hanker-ing after conspiracy, which requires dictatorship, and the League was converted — for ordinary peacetime at least — into a pure propaganda society. These new Rules were submitted to the communities for discussion — so democratic was the procedure now followed — then once again debated at the Second Congress and finally adopted by the latter on December 8, 1847. They are to be found printed in Wermuth and Stieber, Part I, p. 239, Appendix X.
The Second Congress took place in late November and early December of the same year. Marx too attended this time and expounded the new theory in a lengthy debate — the congress lasted at least ten days. All contradiction and doubt were finally over and done with, the new basic principles were adopted unanimously, and Marx and I were commissioned to draw up the Manifesto. This was done immediately afterwards. A few weeks before the February Revolution it was sent to London to be printed. Since then it has travelled round the world, has been translated into almost all languages and still today serves in numerous countries as a guide for the proletarian movement. In place of the old League motto, "All Men Are Brothers", appeared the new battle cry, "Working Men of All Countries, Unite!"[194]
which openly proclaimed the international character of the struggle. Seventeen years later this battle cry resounded throughout the world as the motto of the International Working Men's Association, and today the valiant proletariat of all countries has inscribed it on its banner.
The February Revolution broke out. The London Central Authority functioning hitherto immediately transferred its powers to the Brussels leading circle. But this decision came at a time when an actual state of siege already existed in Brussels, and the Germans in particular could no longer assemble anywhere. We were all of us just on the point of going to Paris, and so the new Central Authority decided likewise to dissolve, to hand over all its powers to Marx and to empower him immediately to constitute a new Central Authority in Paris. Hardly had the five persons who adopted this decision (March 3, 1848) separated, when the police forced their way into Marx's home, arrested him and compelled him to leave for France the following day, which was just where he wanted to go.
In Paris we all soon came together again. It was there that the following document was drawn up and signed by the members of the new Central Authority. It was distributed throughout Germany and quite a few can still learn something from it even today:
DEMANDS OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY IN GERMANY[195]
1. The whole of Germany shall be declared a single and indivisible republic.
3. Representatives of the people shall receive payment so that workers, too, shall be able to become members of the German parliament.
4. Universal arming of the people. 7. Princely and other feudal estates, together with mines, pits, and so forth, shall become the property of the state. The estates shall be cultivated on a large scale and with the most up-to-date scientific devices in the interests of the whole of society.
8. Mortgages on peasant lands shall be declared the property of the state. Interest on such mortgages shall be paid by the peasants to the state.
9. In localities where the tenant system is developed, the land rent or the quit-rent shall be paid to the state as a tax.
11. All the means of transport, railways, canals, steamships, roads, the posts etc. shall be taken over by the state. They shall become the property of the state and shall be placed free at the disposal of the impecunious classes.
14. The right of inheritance to be curtailed. 15. The introduction of steeply graduated taxes, and the abolition of taxes on articles of consumption.
16. Inauguration of national workshops. The state guarantees a livelihood to all workers and provides for those who are incapacitated for work.
17. Universal and free education of the people. It is to the interest of the German proletariat, the petty bourgeoisie and the small peasants to support these demands with all possible energy. Only by the realisation of these demands will the millions in Germany, who have hitherto been exploited by a handful of persons and whom the exploiters would like to keep in further subjection, win the rights and attain to that power to which they are entitled as the producers of all wealth.
The Committee: Karl Marx, Karl Schapper, H. Bauer, F. Engels, J. Moll, W. Wolff
At that time the craze for revolutionary legions prevailed in Paris. Spaniards, Italians, Belgians, Dutchmen, Poles and Germans flocked together in crowds to liberate their respective fatherlands. The German legion was led by Herwegh, Bornstedt, Börnstein. Since immediately after the revolution all foreign workers not only lost their jobs but in addition were harassed by the public, the influx into these legions was very great. The new government saw in them a means of getting rid of foreign workers and granted them l'étape du soldat, that is, quarters along their line of march and a marching allowance of fifty centimes per day up to the frontier, wherupon the eloquent Lamartine, the Foreign Minister who was so readily moved to tears, found an opportunity of betraying them to their respective governments.
We opposed this playing with revolution most decisively. To carry an invasion, which was to import the revolution forcibly from outside, into the midst of the ferment then going on in Germany, meant to undermine the revolution in Germany itself, to strengthen the governments and to deliver the legionaries— Lamartine stood as guarantor for that — defenceless into the hands of the German troops. When subsequently the revolution was victorious in Vienna and Berlin, the legion became all the more pointless; but once begun, the game was continued.
We founded a German communist club[196] in which we advised the workers to keep away from the legion and to return instead to their homelands singly and work there for the movement. Our old friend Flocon, who had a seat in the Provisional Government, obtained for the workers sent by us the same travel concessions as had been granted to the legionaries. In this way we returned three or four hundred workers to Germany, including the great majority of the League members.
As could easily be foreseen, the League proved to be much too weak a lever by comparison with the popular mass movement that had now broken out. Three quarters of the League members who had previously lived abroad had changed their domicile by returning to their homeland; their previous communities were thus to a great extent dissolved and they lost all contact with the League. Some of the more ambitious among them did not even try to resume this contact, but each one began a small separate movement on his own account in his own locality. Finally, the conditions in each separate small state, each province and each town were so different that the League would have been incapable of giving more than the most general directives; such directives were, however, much better disseminated through the press. In short, from the moment when the causes which had made the secret League necessary ceased to exist, the secret League lost all significance as such. But this could least of all surprise the persons who had just stripped this same secret League of the last vestige of its conspiratorial character.
That, however, the League had been an excellent school for revolutionary activity was now demonstrated. On the Rhine, where the Neue Rheinische Zeitung provided a firm centre, in Nassau, in Rheinish Hesse, etc., everywhere members of the League stood at the head of the extreme democratic movement. The same was the case in Hamburg. In Southern Germany the predominance of petty-bourgeois democracy stood in the way. In Breslau, Wilhelm Wolff was active with great success until the summer of 1848; in addition he received a Silesian mandate as an alternate deputy to the Frankfurt parliament. Finally, the compositor Stephan Born, who had worked in Brussels and Paris as an active member of the League, founded a Workers' Fraternity in Berlin which became fairly widespread and existed until 1850. Born, a very talented young man, who, however, was a bit too much in a hurry to become a political figure, "fraternised" with the most motley Cherethites and Pelethites(7) just to get a crowd together, and was not at all the man who could bring unity into the conflicting tendencies, light into the chaos. Consequently, in the official publications of the association the views represented in the Communist Manifesto were mingled hodge-podge with guild recollections and guild aspirations, fragments of Louis Blanc and Proudhon, protectionism, etc.; in short, they wanted to please everybody. In particular, strikes, trade unions and producers' co-operatives were set going and it was forgotten that above all it was a question of first conquering, by means of political victories, the field in which alone such things could be realised on a lasting basis. When, afterwards, the victories of the reactionaries made the leaders of the Fraternity realise the necessity of taking a direct part in the revolutionary struggle, they were naturally left in the lurch by the confused mass which they had grouped around themselves. Born took part in the Dresden uprising of May 1849[197] and had a lucky escape. But, in contrast to the great political movement of the proletariat, the Workers' Fraternity proved to be a pure Sonderbund,[198] which to a large extent existed only on paper and played such a subordinate role that the reactionaries did not find it necessary to suppress it until 1850, and its surviving offshoots until several years later.[199] Born, whose real name was Buttermilch, has become not a big political figure but an insignificant Swiss professor, who no longer translates Marx into guild language but the meek Renan into his own fulsome German.
With June 13, 1849, in Paris,[200] the defeat of the May insurrections in Germany and the suppression of the Hungarian revolution by the Russians, a great period of the 1848 Revolution came to a close. But the victory of the reactionaries was as yet by no means final. A reorganisation of the scattered revolutionary forces was required, and hence also of the League. The situation again forbade, as in 1848, any open organisation of the proletariat; hence one had to organise again in secret.
In the autumn of 1849 most of the members of the former central authorities and congresses gathered again in London. The only ones still missing were Schapper, who was imprisoned in Wiesbaden but came after his acquittal in the spring of 1850,(8) and Moll, who, after he had accomplished a series of most dangerous missions and agitational journeys — eventually he recruited mounted gunners for the Palatinate artillery right under the noses of the Prussian army in the Rhine Province — joined the Besançon workers' company of Willich's corps and was killed by a shot in the head during the battle at the Murg in front of the Rothenfels Bridge.[201] On the other hand Willich now entered upon the scene. Willich was one of those sentimental Communists so common in Western Germany since 1845, who on that account alone was instinctively, furtively antagonistic to our critical tendency. More than that, he was entirely the prophet, convinced of his personal mission as the predestined liberator of the German proletariat and as such a direct claimant as much to political as to military dictatorship. Thus, to the early Christian communism previously preached by Weitling was added a kind of communist Islam. However, propaganda for this new religion was for the time being restricted to the refugee barracks under Willich's command.
Hence, the League was organised afresh; the Address of March 1850, published in an appendix (IX, No. 1), was put into effect and Heinrich Bauer sent as an emissary to Germany. The Address, edited by Marx and myself, is still of interest today, because petty-bourgeois democracy is even now the party which must certainly be the first to take the helm in Germany as the saviour of society from the communist workers on the occasion of the next European upheaval now soon due (the European revolutions, 1815, 1830, 1848-52, 1870, have occurred at intervals of fifteen to eighteen years in our century). Much of what is said there is, therefore, still applicable today. Heinrich Bauer's mission was crowned with complete success. The jolly little shoemaker was a born diplomat. He brought the former members of the League, some who had become laggards and some who were acting on their own account, back into the active organisation, particularly the then leaders of the Workers' Fraternity. The League began to play the dominant role in the workers', peasants' and gymnastic associations to a far greater extent than before 1848, so that the next quarterly address to the communities, in June 1850, could already report that the student Schurz from Bonn (later on American ex-minister), who was touring Germany in the interest of petty-bourgeois democracy, had "found that the League already controlled all useful forces" (see Appendix IX, No. 2).(9) The League was undoubtedly the only revolutionary organisation that had any significance in Germany.
But what purpose this organisation should serve depended very substantially on whether the prospects of a renewed upsurge of the revolution materialised. And in the course of the year 1850 this became more and more improbable, indeed impossible. The industrial crisis of 1847, which had paved the way for the Revolution of 1848, had been overcome; a new, unprecedented period of industrial prosperity had set in; whoever had eyes to see and used them must have clearly perceived that the revolutionary storm of 1848 was gradually declining.
"With this general prosperity, in which the productive forces of bourgeois society develop as luxuriantly as is at all possible within bourgeois relationships, there can be no talk of a real revolution. Such a revolution is only possible in the periods when both these factors, the modern productive forces and the bourgeois forms of production, come in collision with each other. The various quarrels in which the representatives of the individual factions of the Continental Party of Order[202] now indulge and mutually compromise themselves, far from providing the occasion for new revolutions, are, on the contrary, possible only because the basis of the relationships is momentarily so secure and, what the reaction does not know, so bourgeois. All reactionary attempts to hold up bourgeois development will rebound off it just as certainly as all moral indignation and all enthusiastic proclamations of the democrats." Thus
Marx and I wrote in the "Review. May to October 1850" in the
Neue Rheinische Zeitung. Politisch-ökonomische Revue, No. V-VI, Hamburg, 1850, p. 153.(10)
This cool estimation of the situation, however, was regarded as heresy by many persons, at a time when Ledru-Rollin, Louis Blanc, Mazzini, Kossuth and, among the lesser German lights, Rüge, Kinkel, Goegg and the rest of them were flocking together in London to form provisional governments of the future not only for their respective fatherlands but for the whole of Europe, and when it only remained a matter of obtaining the requisite money from America as a revolutionary loan to consummate at a moment's notice the European revolution and the various republics which went with it as a matter of course. Can anyone be surprised that a man like Willich was taken in by this, that Schapper, acting on his old revolutionary impulse, also allowed himself to be fooled, and that the majority of the London workers, to a large extent refugees themselves, followed them into the camp of the bourgeois-democratic artificers of revolution? Suffice it to say that the reserve maintained by us was not to the liking of these people; one was to enter into the game of making revolutions. We most decisively refused to do so. A split ensued; more about this is to be read in the Revelations.(11) Then came the arrest of Nothjung,[203] followed by that of Haupt, in Hamburg. The latter turned traitor by divulging the names of the Cologne Central Authority and being envisaged as the chief witness in the trial; but his relatives had no desire to be thus disgraced and bundled him off to Rio de Janeiro, where he later established himself as a merchant and in recognition of his services was appointed first Prussian and then German Consul General. He is now back in Europe.(12)
For a better understanding of what follows, I give the list of the Cologne accused: 1) P. G. Röser, cigarmaker; 2) Heinrich Bürgers, who later died, a Party of Progress deputy to the provincial Diet; 3) Peter Nothjung, tailor, who died a few years ago as a photographer in Breslau; 4) W. J. Reiff; 5) Dr. Hermann Becker, now chief burgomaster of Cologne and member of the Upper Chamber; 6) Dr. Roland Daniels, medical practitioner, who died a few years after the trial of tuberculosis contracted in prison; 7) Karl Otto, chemist; 8) Dr. Abraham Jacobi, now medical practitioner in New York; 9) Dr. J. J. Klein, now medical practitioner and town councillor in Cologne; 10) Ferdinand Freiligrath, who, however, was at that time already in London; 11) J. L. Erhard, clerk; 12) Friedrich Lessner, tailor, now in London. Of these, after a public trial before a jury lasting from October 4 to November 12, 1852, the following were sentenced for attempted high treason: Röser, Bürgers and Nothjung to six, Reiff, Otto and Becker to five and Lessner to three years' confinement in a fortress; Daniels, Klein, Jacobi and Erhard were acquitted.
With the Cologne trial this first period of the German communist workers' movement comes to an end. Immediately after the sentence we dissolved our League; a few months later the Willich-Schapper Sonderbund[205] was also laid to eternal rest.
* * *
A whole generation lies between then and now. At that time Germany was a country of handicraft and of domestic industry based on manual labour; now it is a big industrial country still undergoing continual industrial transformation. At that time one had to seek out one by one the workers who had an understanding of their position as workers and of their historico-economic antagonism to capital, because this antagonism was itself in the process of taking shape. Today the entire German proletariat has to be placed under exceptional laws,[206] merely in order to slow down a little the process of its development to full consciousness of its position as an oppressed class. At that time the few persons who reached an understanding of the historical role of the proletariat had to gather in secret, to assemble clandestinely in small communities of 3 to 20 persons. Today the German proletariat no longer needs any official organisation, either public or secret. The simple self-evident interconnection of like-minded class comrades suffices, without any rules, authorities, resolutions or other tangible forms, to shake the whole German Empire. Bismarck is the arbiter of Europe beyond the frontiers of Germany, but within them there grows daily more threateningly the athletic figure of the German proletariat that Marx foresaw back in 1844, the giant for whom the cramped imperial edifice designed to fit the philistine is already becoming too small and whose mighty stature and broad shoulders grow until the moment comes when by merely rising from his seat he will blast the whole structure of the imperial constitution to rubble. And still more. The international movement of the European and American proletariat has so grown in strength that not only its first narrow form — the secret League — but even its second, infinitely broader form — the open International Working Men's Association — has become a fetter for it, and that the simple feeling of solidarity based on the understanding of the identity of class position suffices to create and to hold together one and the same great party of the proletariat among the workers of all countries and tongues. The doctrine which the League represented from 1847 to 1852, and which at that time was treated by the wise philistines with a shrug of the shoulders as the hallucinations of utter madcaps, as the secret doctrine of a few scattered sectarians, has now innumerable adherents in all civilised countries of the world, among those condemned to the Siberan mines as much as among the gold diggers of California; and the founder of this doctrine, the most hated, most slandered man of his time, Karl Marx, was when he died, the ever-sought-after and ever-willing counsellor of the proletariat of the old and the new world.
London, October 8, 1885
Frederick Engels
Endnotes
[181] Engels wrote this work as an introduction to the third German edition of Marx's pamphlet Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne (see present edition, Vol. 11, pp. 395-457) and had it published first in the newspaper Sozialdemokrat, Nos. 46, 47 and 48 of November 12, 19 and 26, 1885, and also in the book K. Marx, Enthüllungen über den Kommunisten-Prozess zu Köln. Neuer Abdruck mit Einleitung von Friedrich Engels und Dokumenten, that appeared late in November 1885. Besides Marx's pamphlet, the book also contained The Communist Trial in Cologne, the fourth appendix to Marx's Herr Vogt (see present edition, Vol. 17, pp. 305-11), Marx's Epilogue to the second German edition of the pamphlet (see present edition, Vol. 24, pp. 51-54) and Addresses of the Central Authority to the League, March and June 1850 (see present edition, Vol. 10, pp. 277-87 and 371-77).
[182] Wermuth, Stieber, Die Communisten-Verschwörungen des 19. Jahrhunderts, Berlin, Part I, 1853, Part II, 1854. The appendices to Part I of the book which expounded the "history" of the workers' movement in the form of instructions for the police carried several documents of the Communist League which had fallen into the hands of the police. Part II (the "Black List") contained detailed information about people connected with the working-class and democratic movement.
[183] Engels may have had in mind the book by G. Adler, Die Geschichte der ersten sozialpolitischen Arbeiterbewegung in Deutschland, Breslau, 1885. In his letter to August Bebel, dated October 28, 1885, Engels writes the following: "Kautsky has given me Adler's very superficial book which is largely based on Stieber; I shall help him write a review" (see present edition,Vol. 47). The critical analysis of this book, which Karl Kautsky wrote on the basis of Engels' comments, was published in the magazine Die Neue Zeit in February 1886. Engels' remarks on Adler's book are to be found in Marx-Engels-Jahrbuch, 2., Berlin, 1979.
[184] Babouvism—one of the trends of Utopian egalitarian communism based on the ideas of natural right. Founded at the close of the 18th century by François Noël Babeuf (Gracchus). Babouvism played a very important role in shaping the socialist views of secret revolutionary societies in the 1830s and 1840s.
[185] Société des saisons (Society of the Seasons)—a secret revolutionary organisation that existed in Paris between 1837 and 1839. It was founded by Auguste Blanqui, Armand Barbes and Martin Bernard with the aim of overthrowing the bourgeois monarchy of Louis Philippe, proclaiming a republic and implementing revolutionary egalitarian ideas. An uprising on May 12, 1839 in Paris, in which revolutionary workers played the leading part, had been planned by the Society of the Seasons; it was suppressed by troops and the National Guard.
[186] Karl Schapper was arrested immediately after the uprising of May 12, 1839 and deported from France after serving seven months in prison; Heinrich Bauer continued his revolutionary activity in Paris, was arrested in December 1841 and also deported.
[187] The reference is to the Frankfurter Attentat (the Frankfurt Attempt). On April 3, 1833, in response to the police measures undertaken by the Federal Diet, a group of conspirators, mainly students, attempted to seize Frankfurt am Main, overthrow the Diet and proclaim a republic. But the conspirators only managed to take possession of the guard house for a short time, following which they were dispersed by troops.
[188] Yhe reference is to the march by revolutionary émigrés and members of the "Young Italy" society, organised by Mazzini in February 1834 with a view to inciting a republican uprising in Piedmont. A detachment of insurgent émigrés of various nationalities under the command of Ramorino invaded Savoy from Switzerland but was defeated by Piedmontese troops.
[189] Demagogues in Germany were the participants in the students' opposition movement after the liberation of the country from Napoleonic rule. The name became current after the Karlsbad Conference of Ministers of the German States in August 1819, which adopted a special resolution on the persecution of the demagogues.
[190] The German Workers' Educational Society in London was founded in February 1840 by Karl Schapper, Joseph Moll and other leaders of the League of the Just (in the 1850s the Society had its premises in Windmill Street, Soho). After the reorganisation of the League of the Just in the summer of 1847 and the founding of the Communist League, the latter's local communities played a leading role in the Society. In 1847 and 1849-50 Marx and Engels took an active part in the Society's work, but on September 17, 1850 they and a number of their followers withdrew because the Willich-Schapper sectarian and adventurist faction had temporarily increased its influence in the Society and caused a split in the Communist League. Later Schapper realised the errors of his ways and took steps towards a reconciliation with Marx. The resultant weakening of sectarian influence made it possible for Marx and Engels to resume their work in the Educational Society in late 1850. In 1918, the Society was closed down by the British Government.
[191] The reference is to the latter half of 1840 when Weitling returned to Paris after a propaganda trip to Germany begun in the spring of 1839. He made a short visit to Geneva in the summer of 1840 and again came back to Paris. In May 1841 Weitling settled in Switzerland for good.
[192] See Note 140.
[193] The Democratic Association, founded on September 27, 1847 in Brussels, united proletarian revolutionaries, mainly German refugees and advanced bourgeois and petty-bourgeois democrats. Marx and Engels took an active part in its establishment. On November 15, 1847 Marx was elected its Vice-President (the President was Lucien Jottrand, a Belgian democrat) and under his influence it became a centre of the international democratic movement. During the February 1848 revolution in France, the proletarian wing of the Brussels Democratic Association sought to arm the Belgian workers and to intensify the struggle for a democratic republic. However, when Marx was expelled from Brussels in March 1848 and the most revolutionary elements were repressed by the Belgian authorities, its activity assumed a narrow, purely local character and in 1849 the Association ceased to exist.
[194] The motto was changed at the First Congress of the Communist League in June 1847.
[195] Engels reproduces the main points of the "Demands of the Communist Party in Germany" (see present edition, Vol. 7, pp. 3-7) which were written by Marx and himself in Paris between March 21 and 24, 1848. This document was discussed by members of the Central Authority, who approved and signed it as the political programme of the Communist League in the revolution that broke out in Germany. In March it was printed as a leaflet, for distribution among revolutionary German émigré workers who were about to return home. The leaflet soon reached members of the Communist League in other countries, notably German émigré workers in London. Early in April, the "Demands" were published in several democratic German papers.
[196] The reference is to the German Workers' Club, founded in Paris on March 8-9, 1848, on the initiative of the Communist League leaders. The leading role in it belonged to Marx. The Club's aim was to unite the German émigré workers in Paris, explain to them the tactics of the proletariat in a bourgeois-democratic revolution and also to counter the attempts of the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois democrats to stir up the German workers by nationalist propaganda and make them join the adventurist march of volunteer legions into Germany. The Club was successful in arranging the return of German workers one by one to their own country to take part in the revolutionary struggle there.
[197] From May 3 to 9, 1849 Dresden, the capital of Saxony, was the scene of an armed uprising caused by the refusal of the King of Saxony to approve the Imperial Constitution drafted by the Frankfurt National Assembly. The insurgents, among whom the workers played a prominent part in fighting on the barricades, gained control of a considerable section of the city and formed a provisional government headed by the radical democrat Samuel Tzschirner. An active part in the uprising was played by Mikhail Bakunin, the Russian revolutionary, Stephan Born and Richard Wagner, the composer. The uprising was suppressed by Saxon and Prussian troops.
[198] The Sonderbund—a separatist union of the seven economically backward Catholic cantons of Switzerland formed in 1843 to resist progressive bourgeois reforms and to defend the privileges of the Church and the Jesuits.
[199] The Workers' Fraternity was suppressed in all the states belonging to the German Confederation in mid-1850. But some of its groups in North and South Germany existed until 1852. Following the defeat of the Dresden uprising Born fled to Switzerland.
[200] See Note 75.
[201] Joseph Moll was mortally wounded in the stomach (not in the head) during the encounter at the Rothenfels Bridge on the River Murg on June 29, 1849.
[202] The French Party of Order formed in 1848 was a coalition of monarchist groups: the Legitimists (supporters of the Bourbon dynasty), the Orleanists (supporters of the Orleans dynasty) and the Bonapartists. It was the party of the conservative big bourgeoisie. From 1849 until the coup d'état of December 2, 1851 it held sway in the Legislative Assembly of the Second Republic.
[203] Early in May 1851 Peter Nothjung was sent on a tour of Germany as an emissary of the Cologne Central Authority of the Communist League. On May 10 he was arrested in Leipzig. The documents seized from him enabled the authorities of Prussia and other German states to arrest more League members.
[205] The reference is to the Willich-Schapper sectarian group that seceded from the Communist League after the split of September 15, 1850 and formed an independent organisation with its own Central Committee. By its activities it helped the Prussian police uncover the illegal communities of the Communist League in Germany and gave it a pretext for fabricating evidence in a trial against the prominent leaders of the Communist League in Cologne in 1852. On the Sonderbund see Note 198.
[206] See Note 174.
[204] The Battle of Murfreesboro, on the Stone River (Tennessee), took place between December 31, 1862 and January 2, 1863, and ended in the defeat of the Confederate army. This was one of the first victories won by the North over the slave-owning states.