Routledge Library Editions karl marx

the sentence and place Kinkel on trial again, as he should have been sentenced to death.

However, the military legal authorities met with the united resistance of the Ministry which, although it was prepared to admit that a traitor had been punished too leniently, declared that the sentence should be confirmed by the King “ as an act of mercy” and as a concession to public opinion. At the same time the Ministry declared that it thought it “ advisable” that Kinkel should serve his sentence in “ a civil institution”, because it might cause “ a great sensation ” if he were treated as a fortress prisoner. The King accepted the proposals of his Ministry but thereby caused just the “ great sensation” it had been anxious to avoid, for “ public opinion” considered it a piece of cynical mockery that “ as an act of mercy” the King should send a man to hard labour in a common prison after a court-martial had sentenced him to imprisonment in a fortress only.

However, owing to its inability to appreciate the finer points of the Prussian Criminal Code, public opinion was under a misapprehension. Kinkel had not been sentenced to arrest in a fortress, but to penal imprisonment in a fortress, which was something quite different and in fact much more severe and more revolting than ordinary hard labour in a common prison. Prisoners under sentence of penal imprisonment in a fortress were huddled together ten or twenty in one cell with only a hard bench to sleep on, whilst their food was poor in quality and insufficient in quantity. They had to perform all kinds of menial labour, such as cleaning out the latrines and sweeping the streets, etc., and at the least offence they were given a taste of the whip. For fear of “public opinion” the Ministry had been anxious to spare Kinkel this inhumanity, but when “ public opinion” misunderstood the situation the Ministry did not dare to admit its own “ humanitarian motives” for fear of the “ grape- shot prince”, and it therefore left the King under a suspicion which was bound to damage his reputation and which in fact actually did so in the eyes of all well-meaning people.

Under the impression of this unfortunate failure the Ministry was anxious to avoid any further “ sensations” as a result of Kinkel’s prison experiences, but its courage went only as far as ordering that under no circumstances should Kinkel be subjected to corporal punishment. It would also have liked to free him from the necessity offorced labour and it suggested to the governor of the prison in Naugard, where Kinkel was first sent, that he should take this action on his own initiative. However, the old bureaucrat turned a deaf ear to the suggestion and carried out his instructions to the letter, putting Kinkel to the spooling-




wheel. This again caused a great sensation, and “ The Song of the Spinning Wheel” appeared and was declaimed with great gusto all over the country, whilst pictures of the poet at the wheel were sold everywhere. Writing to his wife Kinkel declared : “ The factional struggles and the play of fate are approaching madness when the hand which gave the German nation ‘ Otto der Schiltz ’ now turns the spooling-wheel.” However, the old experience that the “moral indignation” of the Philistine usually ends in absurdity was soon confirmed. Alarmed by the general indignation and having more courage than the Ministry, the local authorities in Stettin ordered that Kinkel should henceforth be occupied with literary work only, whereupon Kinkel protested and declared that he would prefer to stay at the spooling- wheel because light physical work permitted him to let his thoughts run freely whilst copying all day long might affect his chest and impair his health.

The widespread opinion that Kinkel was being treated with particular severity in prison at the instructions of the King was therefore incorrect, though naturally he had quite enough to put up with. The governor of the prison, Schnuchel, was a strict bureaucrat, but he was not inhuman. In addressing Kinkel he always iised the familiar form ” Du ’V but he granted him as much time as possible in the open air and showed a sympathetic understanding for the ceaseless efforts of Frau Kinkel to secure the release of her husband. In May 1850 when Kinkel was transferred to the prison of Spandau he was granted the formal “Sie”, ² but he was compelled to submit to having his hair and beard shaved off, and the governor of the prison, a pious reactionary named Jeserich, plagued him with attempts at conversion and immediately began the most revolting petty disputes. However, even this pious fellow made no very great difficulties when the Ministry called on him to make a report in connection with a request of Frau Kinkel that her husband should be released on condition that he should emigrate to America, give his word of honour not to engage in any further political activities, and not return to Europe. Jeserich even declared that his knowledge of Kinkel convinced him that the best cure for the latter’s soul would be found in America. Nevertheless, he should be kept in prison for about a year still in order that the sword of justice should not be unduly blunted and notched, but after that, providing that his health did not suffer from the long imprisonment, and up to the present there

¹ Du—Thou ; used as a familiar form of address amongst friends or, formerly, by superiors towards inferiors.—Tr.

² Sie—You.—Tr.


had been no signs of it doing so, he might be permitted to emigrate.

This report was submitted to the King who, however, proved even more vengeful than the prison governor and the Ministry, and the “All-Highest” decided that Kinkel should not be released after one year because he had not been sufficiently humiliated and punished.

When one considers the personal cult which was developed in connection with Kinkel at the time it is easy to understand that it must have aroused disgust in men like Marx and Engels, for Philistine side-shows of that sort were always hateful to them. In his articles on the Reich’s Constitution campaign Engels had already written bitterly of the fuss made about the “ educated” victims of the May insurrections, whilst no one bothered about the hundreds and even thousands of simple workers who had lost their lives in the fighting or were rotting in the underground cells at Rastatt or were compelled to eat the bitter bread of banishment down to the last miserable crust in poverty and privation. However, even apart from this there were many men amongst the “ educated victims” who were being treated far worse than Kinkel and who nevertheless bore themselves with far greater manliness without anyone waxing indignant at their fate. There was August ROckel, for instance, who was certainly no meaner intellect than Kinkel. He was brutally maltreated in the prison of Waldheim and even subjected to corporal punishment, but even after twelve years of such martyrdom his torturers could not force him to beg for mercy by as much as the flicker of an eyelid, so that, helpless in the face of such indomitable and manly pride, they were finally compelled, so to speak, to eject him from prison. Rockel was by no means the only one who showed such steadfast manliness, in fact, of all the prisoners Kinkel was the only one who did public penance when, after a few months of by no means intolerable imprisonment, he caused his speech for the defence at Rastatt to be published. The bitter and ruthless criticism to which Marx and Engels subjected it was therefore thoroughly justified, all the more so as they could say with truth that far from worsening Kinkel’s position their attack had improved it.

The further development of the affair showed that they were right. The hero-worship of Kinkel caused the bourgeoisie to loosen its purse-strings, so much so in fact that it was possible to bribe one of the officials of Spandau prison and in November 1850 Kinkel was rescued by Karl Schurz. That was His Majesty’s reward for his vengefulness. Had he permitted Kinkel to emigrate to America and accepted hiS' word of honour not to




take any further part in politics Kinkel would soon have been forgotten, as even the prison governor Jeserich had realized, but thanks to his successful escape from prison Kinkel was now a thrice-lauded agitator and the King had not only to pocket the damage, but also to swallow the resultant mockery.

However, the King determined to revenge himself in a royal fashion. The report of Kinkel’s escape gave birth to an idea which even he was honest enough to admit was “ ignoble ”, but he nevertheless instructed Manteuffel to make use of the “valuable personality ” Stieber with a view to discovering a conspiracy and punishing its authors. Stieber already enjoyed such general contempt that even the Police President of Berlin, Hinckeldey, whose own conscience was elastic enough in all truth when it was a question of persecuting the political opponents of the State, protested against the man’s re-employment in the police service, but all to no purpose and Stieber was given a free hand to show what he could do. The result was the Cologne communist trial with its background of theft and perjury.

This piece of official criminality was a dozen times worse than the Kinkel affair and far more infamous, but it is not on record that the worthy petty-bourgeois citizens of Germany gave vent to any particular indignation at it. Perhaps these pleasant characters were anxious to prove how thoroughly Marx and Engels had seen through their hypocrisy from the beginning.

2. 
   The Split in the Communist League
   

On the whole the significance of the Kinkel affair was more symptomatic than real. The essence of the dispute which developed at about this time between Marx and Engels on the one hand and the London fugitives on the other, can be seen most clearly in connection with the Kinkel affair, although the latter was not its most important factor and certainly not its cause.

The two chief activities of Marx and Engels in 1850, apart from the issue of the Neue Rheinische Revue, show us what drew the two friends towards the other emigrants and what tended to separate them. On the one hand there was the Fugitives Aid Committee, which they founded together with Bauer, Pfander and WiHich to assist political fugitives, who were flooding to London all the more freely owing to the fact that the authorities in Switzerland had begun to treat them with scant consideration,




and on the other hand there was the re-establishment of the Communist League, a task which became more and more necessary as the victorious counter-revolution ruthlessly deprived the working class to an increasing extent of the freedom of the press and the freedom of assembly, in fact of all the means of open propaganda. One may sum up the situation by saying that Marx and Engels declared themselves in solidarity with the fugitives personally, but not politically, that they shared the sufferings of the fugitives, but not their illusions, that they sacrificed their last penny to assist the fugitives, but not the smallest fraction of their political convictions.

The German, and still more so the international emigration, represented a confused mixture of the most diverse elements. However, they all hoped for a resuscitation of the revolution which would permit them to return home, and they all worked for this aim so that there appeared to be a basis for joint action, but in practice every concrete effort invariably failed. The utmost that was achieved was the adoption of paper resolutions, and the more pompous they sounded the less they really signified. Immediately any practical action was taken the most unedifying quarrels began. These quarrels were not caused by the persons engaged in them, and at the utmost they were only sharpened by the disagreeable situation in which the participants found themselves. Their real basis was the class struggle, which had determined the course of the revolution and which continued in the emigration despite all the well-meaning attempts which were made to exorcise it. Marx and Engels realized the fruitlessness of all such attempts from the beginning and took no part in them, a circumstance which united all the fractions and groups on at least one point, namely that Marx and Engels were the real and incorrigible trouble-makers.

On their part they continued the policy of proletarian class struggle which they had begun even before the revolution. Since the autumn of 1849 the old membership of the Communist League had re-assembled in London almost in its entirety, with the exception of Moll, who had fallen in the engagement on the Murg, Schapper, who arrived only in the summer of 1850, and Wilhelm Wolff, who came to London from Switzerland only a year later. In addition new members had been won. There was August Willich, a former Prussian officer who had been won over by his adjutant Engels and had shown himself a capable leader of his volunteer corps during the campaign in Baden and the Palatinate. He was a very useful man, but theoretically unclear. Then there were many younger men: the merchant Konrad Schramm, the teacher Wilhelm Pieper, and above all




Wilhelm Liebknecht, who had studied at various German universities but had taken his finals in the insurrection in Baden and in exile in Switzerland. In the following years all these men were closely connected with Marx, most devotedly probably Liebknecht. Marx did not always speak so highly of the other two, who caused him a certain amount of trouble, but one must not take every word uttered in annoyance at its face value. Konrad Schramm died young of consumption, and Marx declared that he had been the “ Percy Hotspur ” of the party, and referring to Pieper he declared that, “all in all he was a bon garfon ”. Thanks to Pieper the Gottingen advocate Johannes Miquel came into correspondence with Marx and then joined the Communist League, and Marx obviously regarded him as a man of some intelligence. Miquel remained loyal to the flag for a number of years, but in the end, like his friend Pieper, he turned tail and went back to the camp of the liberals.

In March 1850 the Central Committee of the Communist League issued a circular drawn up by Marx and Engels, and it was taken to Germany by Heinrich Bauer as an emissary of the League entrusted with its reorganization in Germany. It was based on the belief that a new revolution was approaching, “ perhaps as a result of an independent rising of the French proletariat, or as a result of an invasion of the revolutionary Babel by the forces of the Holy Alliance ”. Just as the March Revolution had carried the bourgeoisie to victory, so the coming revolution would carry the petty-bourgeoisie to victory and the latter would then again betray the proletariat.

The attitude of the revolutionary workers party to the petty- bourgeois democrats was summed up as follows : “ The revolutionary workers party will co-operate with the petty-bourgeois democrats against the fraction whose overthrow they both desire, but it will oppose them in all points where its own interests arise.” The petty-bourgeoisie would utilize a successful revolution in order to reform capitalist society so as to make life easier and more comfortable for itself and to a certain extent for the workers. However, the proletariat could not be content with this. After its own limited demands had been achieved the democratic petty-bourgeoisie would seek to have done with the revolution as quickly as possible, whilst on the other hand it would be the task of the workers to make the revolution permanent “ until all the more or less possessing classes have been forced from power and State power has been taken over by the proletariat, and the association of the workers, not only in one country, but in all the most important countries throughout the world, is so far progressed that competition between the workers of




these countries has ceased and at least the most important tools of production are in their hands.”

The circular therefore warned the workers not to let themselves be deceived by the conciliatory preachings of the petty- bourgeois democrats, or to let themselves be degraded to the role of camp-followers of bourgeois democracy. On the contrary, they should organize themselves as strongly and as thoroughly as possible in order, after the victory of the revolution, which would be won as usual by their strength and courage, to dictate such conditions to the petty-bourgeoisie that the rule of the bourgeois democrats would bear within it the seeds of its own decay, thus greatly facilitating its replacement later by the rule of the proletariat.

“ During the struggle and immediately afterwards the workers must oppose above all and as far as possible all bourgeois attempts at pacification and compel the Democrats to carry their terrorist phrases into execution. . . . Far from opposing so-called excesses, the vengeance of the people on hated individuals or attacks of the masses on buildings which arouse hateful memories, we must not only tolerate, but even take the lead in them.” During the elections for the National Assembly the workers should put forward their own candidates everywhere, even when there was no chance of getting them elected, and ignore all democratic phrases. At the beginning of the movement the workers would naturally not be able to bring forward any definitely communist proposals, but they could compel the Democrats to interfere to the greatest possible extent and in every possible way with the structure of the previous social order, to interfere with its orderly working and thereby compromise themselves, and to place as many of the means of production as possible, transport, factories, railways, etc., in the hands of the State.

Above all, when the revolution abolished feudalism the workers should not tolerate the carving up of the big feudal estates and the distribution of the pieces amongst the peasants as private property, as had been done after the Great French Revolution, for this would perpetuate the rural proletariat and create a petty-bourgeois class of peasant landholders experiencing the same circle of impoverishment and indebtedness as the French peasants. On the contrary, the workers should demand that the confiscated feudal estates remain the property of the State to be turned into workers colonies and run by the associated land proletariat on large-scale agricultural lines. In this way the principle of common ownership would be given a firm basis in the very centre of tottering bourgeois property relations.

Armed with this circular Bauer met with great success on his




mission to Germany. He re-established connections which had been broken off and established new ones, and above al he succeeded in winning considerable influence on the remnants of the workers, peasants, day-labourers and sport associations which had continued to exist despite the terrorism of the counterrevolution. The most influential members of the Workers Brotherhood founded by Stephan Born also joined the Communist League, and Karl Schurz, who was on a tour through Germany on behalf of a fugitives association in Switzerland, reported to Zurich that the League was winning “ all the most useful elements ”. In a document issued in June 1850 the Central Committee was able to report that the League had won a firm footing in a number of German towns and that leading committees had been formed in Hamburg for Sleswig-Holstein, in Schwerin for Mecklenburg, in Breslau for Silesia, in Leipzig for Saxony and Berlin, in Nuremberg for Bavaria, and in Cologne for the Rhineland and Westphalia.

The same document also declared that London was the strongest district of the League, that it provided the funds of the League almost exclusively, directed the work of the German Workers Educational League (Deutscher Arbeiterbildungsverein) and of the most important emigrant groups, and that the League maintained close relations with the English, French and Hungarian revolutionary parties. However, judged from another angle the London district of the League was also its weakest point because through it the League became involved more and more in the fierce and hopeless struggles of the emigrants.

During the summer of 1850 the hope that the revolution would soon revive rapidly disappeared. In France the general franchise was destroyed without producing any rising on the part of the workers, and the decision now lay between the Pretender Louis Bonaparte and the monarchist reactionary National Assembly. In Germany the democratic petty-bourgeoisie retired from the political arena whilst the liberal bourgeoisie joined in the body-snatching activities which Prussia immediately began at the expense of the revolution. However, Prussia was cheated by the other German States, which all danced to the tune of Austria, whilst the Tsar flourished the knout threateningly over the whole of Germany. The more obvious the revolutionary ebb became, the more the emigration intensified its efforts to create an artificial revolution. It deliberately ignored all the warning signs and placed its hope in miracles, which it thought to perform by strength of will and determination alone. At the same time and to the same extent it became distrustful of any self-criticism within its ranks, and as a result Marx and Engels,