Routledge Library Editions karl marx

CHAPTER SIX: REVOLUTION AND COUNTER-REVOLUTION

I. February and March Days

On the 24th of February 1848 the bourgeois monarchy in France was overthrown by a revolution. T^ movement was not without its repercussions in Brussels, but King Leopold, a wily old Coburger fox, succeeded in extricating himself from the situation more cleverly than his father-in-law in Paris. He announced to his Liberal Ministers, the Deputies and the Mayors that if the nation demanded it he would abdicate at once, and this generous gesture so touched the hearts of the sentimental bourgeois statesmen that they immediately suppressed all their rebellious feelings.

But after that the King caused his soldiers to disperse all public meetings and set his police to hunt down foreign fugitives. Marx was treated with particular brutality. Not only did the police arrest him, but they also arrested his wife, who was held for one night in the company of common prostitutes. The police official responsible for this piece of infamy was later removed from his post and the order of arrest had to be withdrawn immediately, but not so the order of expulsion, although it was a thoroughly unnecessary piece of chicanery, for Marx was in any case about to leave Brussels for Paris.

Immediately after the outbreak of the revolution the central authorities of the Communist League in London transferred executive authority to the district representatives in Brussels, but in view of the situation in Brussels, which was practically under martial law, the latter handed on this authority to Marx together with instructions to form a new central leadership in Paris, to which he had been recalled by a letter signed by Flocon on behalf of the provisional government, an incident which greatly honoured him.

On the 6th of March he once again had an opportunity of putting his superior understanding of the political situation to good account when at a big meeting of German fugitives living in Paris he energetically opposed an adventurous plan to invade Germany by armed force in order to revolutionize the country.


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This plan had been hatched out by the dubious Bornstedt, who. had unfortunately succeeded in winning Herwegh for it. Bakunin was also in favour of the plan, though he later regretted having given it his support. The provisional government was also prepared to support the plan, but less from any real revolutionary enthusiasm than with the arriere pensee that in view of the prevailing unemployment it would be an excellent thing to get rid of many foreign-born workers. It placed barracks at the disposal of the revolutionaries and made them a daily grant of 50 centimes per man for the march to the frontier. Herwegh had no illusions about the reasons which prompted the provisional government 10 support the venture and he himself referred to “ the egoistic motive ”, the desire “ to get rid of many thousands of foreign-born artisans who were competing with the French ”, but his lack of political vision caused him to pursue the adventure to its pitiful end near Niedcrdossenbach.

Whilst Marx energetically opposed this revolutionary foolery, which had lost any justification it might have had with the victory of the revolution in Vienna on the 13th of March and in Berlin on the 18th of March, he was busily engaged in forging the weapons to further the German revolution effectively, a task on which the communists had concentrated their main attention. In accordance with his instructions he formed a new central leadership in Paris, consisting of himself, Engels and Wolff from Brussels, and Bauer, Moll and Schapper from London. This new body then issued an appeal containing seventeen demands “ in the interests of the German proletariat, the petty-bourgeoisie and the peasantry ”, including a demand that Germany should be proclaimed a republic, one and indivisible, and further demands for the arming of the people, the nationalization of the princely and other feudal estates, of the mines and of the transport system, the establishment of national workshops, and the introduction of a general system of compulsory education at State cost, etc. Naturally, these demands were intended only as laying down the general lines of communist propaganda, for no one knew better than Marx that they could not be carried out from one day to the next, but only as the result of a long process of revolutionary development.

The Communist League was much too weak to act alone in the work of accelerating the revolutionary movement, and it was soon seen that its reorganization on the Continent was only in its infancy. However, this was no longer so important because the working class had now won the means and the possibility of conducting its propaganda openly and therefore the chief reason for the existence of the League was removed.




Under these circumstances Marx and Engels founded a German communist club in Paris and strongly advised its members to keep away from Herwegh’s guerilla bands and instead to make their way singly into Germany in order to further the revolutionary movement there. They succeeded in sending several hundred workers back to Germany, and thanks to the mediation of Flocon they obtained the same support for them as the provisional government had granted to Herwegh and his volunteers.

As the result of these efforts the majority of the members of the Communist League succeeded in getting back into Germany and their activities there demonstrated that the League had been an excellent training school for the revolution. Wherever the revolutionary movement in Germany showed any signs of vigorous development the members of the League were seen to be the driving force behind it : Schapper in Nassau, Wolff in Breslau, Stephan Born in Berlin and other members elsewhere. Born hit the nail on the head when he wrote to Marx : “ The League has ceased to exist and yet it exists everywhere.” ^ an organization it had ceased to exist, but its propaganda was visible everywhere the conditions for the proletarian struggle for freedom existed, although this was true of a comparatively small area of Germany only.

Marx and his nearest friends went to the Rhineland, which was the most progressive part of Germany and where the Code Napoleon afforded greater freedom of movement than the Prussian Civil Code in Berlin, and there they succeeded in securing the lead in preparations which were being made in Cologne by democratic and in part communist elements to found a newspaper. However, things were not by any means all plain sailing, and Engels in particular suffered the disappointment of discovering that his communism in Wuppertal was not even a reality, much less a power in the land and that since the revolution had begun to show real signs of life Wuppertal communism was nothing but a faint shadow of the past. Writing to Marx, who was in Cologne, he declared in a letter of the 25th of April from Barmen : “ 11 is damned little use reckoning on any shares here. . . . They all avoid any discussion of social questions like the plague ; they call it incitement. . . . There is nothing whatever to be got out of my old gentleman. He regards the Kolnische Zeitung as the last word in incitement and he would sooner send us a thousand bullets to finish us off than a thousand thaler to help us along.” However, Engels succeeded in floating fourteen shares, and on the 1st of June 1848 the first number of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung appeared. It war signed by Marx as




chief editor whilst Engels, Dronke, Weerth and the two Wolffs were members of the editorial staff.

2. 
   June Days
   

The Neue Rheinische Zeitung described itself as “an Organ of Democracy ”, but it did not mean left-wing parliamentary democracy. It harboured no such ambitions, and it considered it urgently necessary to watch the official Democrats closely. Its ideal, it declared, was by no means the black, red and gold republic, and in fact its real oppositional work would begin only after the republic had been established.

Completely in the spirit of The Communist Manifesto it sought to further the revolutionary movement on the basis of existing conditions. This task was made all the more urgent by the fact that the revolutionary ground which had been won in March was half lost again by June. In Vienna, where the class antagonisms were still undeveloped, a happy-go-lucky anarchy prevailed, whilst in Berlin the bourgeosie had the book of words in its hands, but it was only too anxious to slip it back at first opportunity into the hands of the vanquished pre-March powers. In the little German States and Statelets Liberal Ministers were giving themselves airs, but they did not distinguish themselves from their feudal predecessors by the display of any manly pride before the throne of kings, but rather by the possession of still more pliable spines. And to crown it all, the first meeting of the Frankfort National Assembly on the 18th of May, which was to create German unity by virtue of its own sovereign authority, proved itself to be no more than a hopeless talking shop.

In its very first number the Neue Rheinische Zeitung dealt with this shadowy unreality so energetically that half of its not very numerous shareholders immediately beat a retreat. Not that the paper placed any exaggerated demands on the political vision and courage of the parliamentary heroes. It criticized the federal republicanism of the left-wing of the Frankfort parliament and declared that a federation of constitutional monarchies, little principalities and republics with a republican government at their head could not be accepted as the final constitution for a united Germany, but it immediately added :

“ We do not put forward any utopian demand for the immediate establishment of a German Republic, one and




indivisible, but we do demand that the so-called Radical Democratic Party should not confuse the first stage of the struggle and of the revolutionary movement with their final aim. German unity and a German constitution can be achieved only as the result of a movement which be forced to seek a decision both as a result of inner conflicts and of a war against the East. The definitive constitution cannot be decreed and it will come about as a result of the movement we have yet to experience. It is therefore not a question of fulfilling this or that political idea or of holding this or that opinion, but of grasping the general trend of development. The National Assembly has only to take the immediately possible practical steps.”

However, the National Assembly did something which according to all the laws of logic should have been practically out of the question : it elected the Austrian Archduke Johann as Reich’s Regent, thus playing the movement into the hands of the princes.

Events in Berlin were more important than those in Frankfort. The Prussian State was the most dangerous enemy of the revolution inside Germany. On the 18th of March the revolution overthrew the Prussian government, but in the given historical situation the fruits of victory fell first into the lap of the bourgeoisie, and the latter hurried to betray the revolution. In order to ensure “ the continuity of legal relations ”, or, in other words, to deny its own revolutionary origin, the bourgeois Camphausen-Hansemann Ministry called a meeting of the United Diet in order to entrust this feudal-corporative body with the drawing up of a bourgeois constitution. On the 6th and 8th of April two laws were passed establishing various bourgeois rights as the basis of the new constitution and providing for the introduction of a general, secret and indirect franchise to elect a new assembly whose task it would be to draw up the constitution in agreement with the Crown.

With the establishment of this brilliant principle of “ agreement with the Crown ” the victory which the proletariat of Berlin had won on the I 8th of March against the Prussian Guards was rendered ineffective, for if the decisions of the proposed new assembly required the agreement of the Crown then obviously the latter was once again in a strong position. It could again dictate its will unless it was brought to heel by a second revolution, a possibility which the Camphausen-Hansemann Ministry did its utmost to prevent. It subjected the assembly, which met on the 22nd of May to the pettiest chicanery, placed itself as “ a shield ” before the dynasty and gave the leaderless counterrevolution a head by recalling the Prince of Prussia from England




whither the thoroughly reactionary heir to the throne had fled to escape the anger of the masses on the 18th of March.

The Berlin Assembly was certainly not a very spirited revolutionary body, but at least it was not able to keep its head so consistently in the clouds as its Frankfort companion. It gave way on the question of “ agreement with the Crown ”, a principle which sucked the marrow from its bones, but after the Berlin masses had again spoken a menacing word by storming the Zeughaus ¹ on the 14th of June it rallied again and took up a more or less determined attitude towards the Crown, and as a result Camphausen resigned, though Hansemann clung to office. The difference between the two was that whilst Camphausen was still troubled by remnants of progressive bourgeois ideology, Hansemann dedicated himself utterly, without shame or scruples, to the naked profit interests of the bourgeoisie, and thought to further them most effectively by kow-towing more zealously than ever to the King and the Junkers, by corrupting the assembly and by oppressing the masses to a greater extent than ever before. For the moment and for reasons of its own the counter-revolution \villingly let him have his head.

The Neue Rheinische Zeitung did its utmost to stem this fatal development. It pointed out that Camphausen was sowing the seeds of reaction in the interests of the bourgeoisie, but that the crop would be reaped in the interests of the feudal party. It did its utmost to stiffen the resistance of the Berlin Assembly and in particular its left-wing, and it fought against the indignation aroused by the fact that a number of old flags and weapons had been destroyed in the storm on the Zeughaus, declaring that the people had shown unerring instinct not only in attacking its oppressors, but in destroying the brilliant illusions of its own past. And, above all, it warned the left wing against contenting itself with the deceptive appearance of parliamentary victories, pointing out that the reaction would gladly grant it such illusions providing the really commanding positions still remained in the hands of the old powers.

It prophesied a miserable end for the Hansemann Ministry, which sought to create a basis for bourgeois dominance by compromising with the old feudal and police State. “ In this ambiguous and contradictory task it sees itself and its aim, the founding of bourgeois dominance, outwitted at every turn by the reaction in the absolutist and feudal interests—and it will be the loser. The bourgeoisie cannot establish its own dominance without winning the whole people as its temporary ally and without

¹ A military building on the Unter den Linden now used exclusively as a museum of milit^y relics.—Tr.




taking up a more or less democratic attitude.” Caustic scorn was poured on the attempts of the bourgeoisie to turn the emancipation of the peasantry, the legitimate task of the bourgeois revolution, into a piece of legerdemain : “ The German bourgeoisie of 1848 is betraying the peasantry, without decency and without shame, although the peasantry represents its natural ally, flesh of its flesh and blood of its blood, and although it is helpless against the aristocracy without the support of the peasantry.” The German Revolution of 1848 was nothing but a parody of the French Revolution of 1789, it declared.

It was a parody in another sense also, for the German Revolution had not gained the victory as a result of its own strength but as the result of a French revolution which had already given the proletariat a share in the government. This neither justifies nor excuses the treachery of the German bourgeoisie to the revolution, but at least it explains it. Whilst the Hansemann Ministry was beginning its grave-digging services the spectre it feared was almost banned. In a terrible street battle which lasted four days the proletariat of Paris was defeated thanks to the joint services rendered to capital by all bourgeois classes and parties. '

In Germany the banner of _“ the victorious vanquished ” was raised from- the dust by the Neue Rheinische ,(eitung, and in a striking article Marx pointed out which side democracy must take in the class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat : “ They will ask us whether we have no tears, no sighs and no words of regret for the victims in the ranks of the National Guard, the Mobile Guard, the Republican Guard and the Regiments of the Line who fell before the anger of the people. The State will look after their widows and orphans, pompous decrees will glorify them and solemn processions will bear their remains to the grave. The official press will declare them immortal and the European reaction from East to West will sing their praises. On the other hand, it is the privilege and right of the democratic press to place the laurel wreaths on the lowering brows of the plebeians tortured with the pangs of hunger, despised by the official press, abandoned by the doctors, abused as thieves, vandals and galley-slaves by all respectable citizens, their wives and children plunged into still greater misery, and the best of their survivors deported overseas.”

This magnificent article, which breathes the fires of revolutionary passion even to-day, cost the Neue Rheinische Zeitung the greater number of those shareholders who still remained.

2. 
   The War against Russia
   

In foreign politics the war against Russia was the pivot around which the Neue Rheinische Zeitung moved. It regarded Russia as the one really dangerous enemy of the revolution and one which would inevitably enter the struggle as soon as the revolutionary movement took on a European character.

It was quite right in this respect, for whilst it was calling for a revolutionary war against Russia the Tsar was offering the Prince of Prussia the use of the Russian army to re-establish despotism in Prussia by armed force. The Neue Rheinische Zeitung was not aware of this, but it has since been proved by documentary evidence, and a year later the Russian bear saved Austrian despotism by crushing the Hungarian Revolution in its clumsy embrace. The German Revolution could not' be finally victorious without destroying both the Prussian and Austrian absolutist States, declared the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, and this would remain impossible so long as the power of the Tsar was unbroken.

^ the result of such a war against Russia the Neue Rheinische Zeitung hoped for a tremendous release of revolutionary forces such as had taken place in France in 1789 as a result of the war against feudal Germany. In the words of Weerth, it treated the German nation en canaille, and this was true in that it bitterly scourged the lackey services which the Germans had rendered for seventy years against the freedom and independence of other nations in America and France, in Italy and Poland, in Holland and Greece, and still other countries : “ Now that the Germans are beginning to cast off their own yoke they must alter their whole policy towards other countries, otherwise they will find that the chains they have forged for others will entangle their own young and only half-descried freedom. Germany will win its own freedom to the extent that it leaves other countries in freedom.” The paper denounced the Machiavellian policy which, although it was being shaken to the roots in Germany itself, deliberately fomented a narrow-minded hatred of things foreign in defiance of the cosmopolitan character of the Germans and in order to paralyse democratic energies, turn the molten lava of the revolution from its course, and forge a weapon of internal oppression.

“ Despite the patriotic howling and drumming of almost the whole of the German press ”, the Neue Rheinische Zeitung came out from the beginning on the side of the Poles in Posen, the Italians in Italy and the Hungarians in Hungary, and mocked at “ the profundity of the combination ” and “ the historical




paradox” which sought to lead the Germans into a crusade against the liberty of Poland, Hungary and Italy at a time when the same Germans were fighting against the very governments which proposed to lead them. “ Only a war against Russia would be a revolutionary war for Germany. In such a war it could wash away the sins of the past, vindicate its own manliness, defeat its own despots, advance the cause of civilization by sacrificing its own sons in a manner worthy of a people which has flung off the chains of long-suffered and dull slavery, and win freedom at home by freeing itself externally.”

As a result of this attitude the Neue Rheinische Zeitung supported the cause of Polish freedom more passionately than that of any other oppressed nation. The movement in Poland in 1848 was limited to the 'Prussian province of Posen because Russian Poland was still exhausted from the revolution of 1830 and Austrian Poland from the insurrection of 1846. It was modest enough in its attitude and demanded hardly more than had been promised by the treaties of 18 i 5 but never granted : the replacement of the army of occupation by native troops and the occupation of all positions by natives. In the first spasm of fear occasioned by the events of the 18th of March the Berlin government promised “ a national reorganization ”, though naturally, it had no intention of ever carrying it out. The Poles were trustful enough to believe in its good-will, but it deliberately incited the German and Jewish population of the province of Posen and systematically provoked a civil war whose atrocities were almost completely the guilt of the Prussians and the responsibility for them entirely so. Deliberately provoked to armed resistance, the Poles fought gallantly and more than once they routed forces superior to their own in numbers and equipment, for instance, on the 30th of April near Miloslav, but in the long run the fight of the Polish scythes against Prussian shrapnel was hopeless.

In the Polish question also the German bourgeoisie played its usual role of treachery and panic. Before the March Revolution it had realized clearly enough how closely the cause of Poland was connected with the cause of Germany, and even after the 18th of March its spokesmen had declared at the so- called preliminary parliament in Frankfort that to work for the re-establishment of national unity in Poland was the solemn duty of the German nation, but this did not prevent Camphausen from playing the lackey to the Prussian Junkers in this question also. He carried out the promise of “ national reorganization ” in a shameful fashion by wresting one piece after the other from the province of Posen, in all over two-thirds, and




causing the United Diet to Incorporate it in the German League. This piece of infamy was the last gasp of that body, which ended its life miserably amidst the general contempt of the German people. The National Assembly in Frankfort was now faced with the question of whether it should recognize those deputies who had been elected in the annexed parts of Posen as its members or not. After a debate which lasted three days it decided as might have been expected of it, and this degenerate offspring of the revolution gave its blessing to the infamy of the counterrevolution.

The importance attached by the Neue Rheinische Zeitung to this question can be seen from the fact that it dealt with the debate in Frankfort in great detail and published eight or nine articles, some of them very long, on the subject, in striking contrast to the contemptuous brevity with which it usually dismissed the parliamentary phrasemongering of this assembly. This series of articles represent the longest work ever published in the paper and both content and style suggest that Marx and Engels were joint authors. In any case, Engels had a large share in the work, which bears unmistakable signs of his style and manner.

The first thing which strikes one in these articles, and it is a feature which does the paper all honour, is the refreshing frankness with which they expose the contemptible game which was being played with Poland. However, the moral indignation of which both Marx and Engels were capable—far more capable than the worthy Philistine could even imagine—had nothing in common with the sentimental sympathy which, for instance, Robert Blum in France showed the maltreated Poles. Their judgment on the efforts of the respected leader of the left wing in this direction read : “ Empty tub-thumping, but as we are gladly prepared to admit, tub-thumping on the grand scale and in a good cause,” and their judgment was well founded, for Blum failed to realize that the betrayal of Poland was at the same time the betrayal of the German Revolution, which thereby lost an indispensable weapon against its deadly enemy Tsarism.

Marx and Engels passed the same disrespectful judgment on the demand for “ the general fraternization of the peoples ”, that vague aspiration towards fraternity irrespective of the historical situation and the social development of the peoples involved. For them such phrases as “Justice ”, “ Humani- tarianism ”, “ Liberty ”, “ Equality ”, “ Fraternity ” and “ Independence ” were no more than moral phrases which sounded fine but played no role in historical and political questions. What they termed “ modern mythology ” was always abhorrent




to them and in the hectic days of the revolution they admitted only one test : “For or against ? ”

The Polish articles of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung breathe a spirit of real revolutionary passion which raises them high above the usual pro-Polish phrases indulged in by the common run of democrats, and even to-day they stand as an eloquent proof of the keen and penetrating political insight of their authors. However, they are not completely free of errors with regard to Polish history. It was certainly of great importance to point out that the struggle for Polish independence could be successful only if it were at the same time a victory of agrarian democracy over patriarchal-feudal absolutism, but they were wrong in assuming that since the Constitution of 1791 the Poles themselves had realized this. It was also incorrect to say that the old Poland of aristocratic democracy was dead and buried, but had left behind a vigorous son, the Poland of peasant democracy. The Polish Junkers who had fought with incomparable bravery on the Western European barricades to free their people from the stifling embrace of the Eastern powers were regarded by Marx and Engels as the representatives of the Polish aristocracy, whereas in fact the Lelewels and the Mieroslavskis had been steeled and purified in the flames of the struggle and had raised themselves above their class as Hutten and Sickingen had once raised themselves above the German feudal class, or, in the less distant past, Clausewitz and Gneisenau above Prussian Junkerdom.

Marx and Engels soon abandoned this error, but Engels always clung to the disdainful judgment passed by the Neue Rheinische Zeitung on the struggle of the Southern Slav nations and groups for national freedom. In 1882 he still maintained the attitude he had taken up in 1849 in his polemic with Bakunin. In July 1848 Bakunin came under suspicion of being an agent of the Russian government, and a report to that effect was published in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung from its Paris correspondent Ewerbeck, whilst a simultaneous and similar report was published by the Havas Bureau. However, this suspicion was revealed almost immediately as baseless, and the Neue Rheinische Zeitung published a handsome apology. At the end of August and the beginning of September Marx travelled to Berlin and Vienna, and in Berlin he resumed his old friendly relations with Bakunin, and when Bakunin was expelled from Prussia in October Marx came out with a strong condemnation of the authorities. When Engels published his polemic against Bakunin in connection with an appeal the latter had issued to the Slavs, he began with the assurance that Bakunin was “ our friend ”, and only




then proceeded to attack Bakunin’s Pan-Slav tendencies, though he did so with considerable severity.

In the Slav question also the interests of the revolution were paramount in determining the attitude of Marx and Engels. The Austrian Slavs—with the exception of the Poles—had sided with the reaction in the struggle of the Vienna government against the revolutionary Germans and against Hungary. They had taken revolutionary Vienna by storm and handed it over to the merciless vengeance of the “ Royal and Imperial ” authorities. At the time when Engels w:L conducting his polemic against Bakunin they were again in action against insurrectionary Hungary, whose revolutionary war was reported by Engels with great expert knowledge in the columns of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, but at the same time with such passionate partizanship that he overestimated the level of the historical development of the Magyars as he had previously overestimated that of the Poles. Answering Bakunin’s demand that the Austrian Slavs should be guaranteed their independence he declared : “ Not on your life ! Our answer to the sentimental phrases about fraternity which are now offered to us on behalf of the most counter-revolutionary nations in Europe is : hatred of Russia was the first revolutionary passion of the Germans and it still is. Since the revolution this hatred of Russia has been enhanced by hatred of the Czechs and the Croats, and we can secure the victory of the revolution, together with the Poles and the Magyars, only by energetic terrorism against these Slav peoples. We know now where the enemies of the revolution are concentrated : in Russia and in the Austrian Slav countries, and no amount of phrases and appeals to a vague democratic future for these countries will prevent us treating our enemies as our enemies.” And therefore Engels proclaims a merciless struggle to the death against “ counter-revolutionary Slavdom ”.

These lines were not due solely to a fierce wave of anger and indignation at the slavish services rendered by the Austrian Slavs to the European reaction. With the exception of the Poles, the Ru^ians and perhaps the Slavs in Turkey, Engels denied the Slav peoples any historical future, “ for the simple reason that all other Slavs have not the first historical, geographical, political and industrial conditions for independence and national life ”. Their struggle for national independence made them into the willing tools of Tsarism, and not all the well-meaning self-deceptions of the democratic Pan-Slavs could alter this fact in the least. The historic right of the great cultural peoples to pursue their revolutionary development w:L more important than the struggle of these small, crippled and impotent




nations and groups for independence, even if here and there some delicate national bud should be broken off at the stem. As a result of the greater struggle these little nations and groups would be privileged to take part in a process of historical development which would remain completely foreign to them if they were left to themselves. And in 1882 he again said very much the same thing : if the struggle of the Balkan Slavs for their independence ran counter to the interests of the proletariat of Western Europe then these lackeys of Tsardom could go to the devil as far as he was concerned ; poetic sympathies had no place in the political struggle.

Engels was wrong when he denied any historical future to the smaller Slav nations, but the fundamental idea which governed his attitude was undoubtedly correct and the Neue Rheinische Zeitung held fast to this idea even in a case when it coincided with the “ poetic sympathies ” of the Philistines.

2.