Royal Road to Science — Marx Engels Collected Works Volume 8, Articles from the Neue Rheinische Zeitung
November 8, 1848 — March 5, 1849
Hello again.
The structure of this entry will be the same as my one from Volume 7 — and Volume 9 will be the same as another journalistic collection as well:
- This Introduction, including the MECW Preface
- Comments on, and quotes from 23 of the 130 newspaper entries (and manuscripts) from November 1848 to March 1849
- Short notes about a few of the 24 documents from the appendices that provide more background information on Marx and Engels in this time
What will not be included in my entry a summary conclusion of this period of revolutionary journalism— I will do that at the end of Volume 9.
The MECW “Preface” for Volume 8 summarizes this book:
“The bulk of the volume consists of articles written by Marx and Engels for the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, organ of the revolutionary-proletarian wing of German and European democracy. These articles, like the rest of the contents of this volume — the letters written by Engels on behalf of the workers’ organisations of Switzerland, the accounts (published in the Appendices) of Marx’s and Engels’ speeches at the meetings of workers and democrats in Cologne, and so on — demonstrate the part which Marx and Engels played in the revolutionary events of those days. Edited by Marx and Engels, the Neue Rheinische Zeitung was a fearlessly revolutionary journal. It consistently exposed the manoeuvres of the monarchist-aristocratic circles and of the liberal bourgeoisie whose connivance they enjoyed; it was the genuine organiser of the people’s struggle. Through this newspaper, Marx and Engels directed the activity of Communist League members in various parts of Germany, influenced the German working-class and democratic movement as a whole, and promoted the unity and mobilisation of all the country’s revolutionary forces.”
A continuing theme of this volume though is generalized retreat for the revolutionary forces: “The defeat of the Paris proletariat in June was the signal for a general counter-attack by monarchist-aristocratic and Right-wing bourgeois circles whose aim was the complete or partial restoration of the old order.”
Another theme, continuing to develop from the previous volume, was a necessity for internationalism: “Marx and Engels realised that if the revolutionary struggle was to succeed, it must not be confined within a national framework but become international; the international solidarity of the democratic and proletarian movement in all the major European countries should be counterposed to the bloc that was being formed by the internal and external counter-revolutionary forces. They saw in every revolutionary centre in any part of Europe an integral element of the general European revolutionary movement. They devoted particular attention to Italy and Hungary, where, despite the general downward trend of the European revolution, an upsurge of popular revolutionary energy was evident…”
However, the above quotation comes with a major asterisk, which is Engels (again the predominant writer in total entries in this volume) antipathy towards Slavs, at least at this point in his life. The MECW preface if anything undersells how rough this could be at times — while also taking the editorial position they generally have about any inexcusable bigotries by Marx or Engels so far — which is to say they were wrong, but then try to show how will improve on these issues in later years:
“However, it must be evident to us today that the articles ‘The Magyar Struggle’ and ‘Democratic Pan-Slavism’ contain some erroneous judgments on the past and future of the small Slav peoples incorporated into Austria. Contrary to the picture of the predatory, oppressive policy of the German states in the east of Europe which Engels gave in his series of articles ‘The Frankfurt Assembly Debates the Polish Question’ (see Vol. 7 of the present edition) and other works, in these articles he represented the subjugation of some of the Slav peoples as having been connected exclusively with the spread of civilisation and culture. History has not confirmed Engels’ opinion that the small Slav peoples of Central Europe were doomed to be absorbed and assimilated by their larger and more highly civilised neighbours. The tendency towards political centralisation which resulted from the development of capitalism and caused the small peoples to lose their national independence, concealed from Engels another tendency which was not sufficiently manifest at the time, namely, the sharpening of the oppressed peoples’ struggle for independence, for setting up their own states.”
And then the “hey, it will get better”: “This point of view was not final. Later on, substantial corrections were made which took into account the liberation struggle of the oppressed peoples in Europe and in the colonial countries against national enslavement, a struggle which was developing with ever growing vigour. Thus already at the period when the Crimean war of 1853–56 was looming ahead, Engels supported the demand of national independence for the small Slav and other peoples in the Balkan Peninsula who were oppressed by the reactionary Turkish Empire.”
In addition to the various entries on the struggles in Italy, Poland, Austria/Hungary, Switzerland, and so on, this volume also brings us Marx’s campaign via the Neue Rheinische Zeitung’s against paying taxes to the counter revolutionary governments of “Germany” and the eventual criminal trials this resulted in.
My personal preferences in this volume ran more towards the excitement of Marx’s anti-tax campaign — and he and Engels’ speeches to the juries that ultimately found them not guilty in two trials related to their paper. I found Engels’ reports of Magyar military maneuvers as the sort of thing that would have been more interesting to read in 1849 as live news than as historical documents today. As samples of my point, Marx on taxes to a repressive state: “From today, therefore, taxes are abolished! It is high treason to pay taxes. Refusal to pay taxes is the primary duty of the citizen!” And Engels on south Slavs (Serbians mostly?) at his worst moment about “Völkerabfälle”: “The next world war will result in the disappearance from the face of the earth not only of reactionary classes and dynasties, but also of entire reactionary peoples. And that, too, is a step forward.”
Newspaper Entries
Again, I will progress through these selections from the Neue Rheinische Zeitung articles entirely in a chronological order. This means we may return to countries with interruptions, but it seems preferable to jumping back and forth through time when the struggles were also quite international, and Marx and Engels were shaping their views based on how they all played out.
From November 9th [always the published date, never the “written on” date], first we turn to the MECW notes for background as we jump back into Prussian affairs: “Marx’s article ‘The Crisis in Berlin’ and his series of articles ‘Counter-Revolution in Berlin’ were written in response to the first moves in the counter-revolutionary coup d’état in Prussia. On November 1, 1848, Frederick William IV dismissed the moderate liberal Pfuel Ministry, and an openly counter-revolutionary Ministry headed by Brandenburg and Manteuffel was formed. On November 9 a royal decree transferred the Prussian National Assembly from Berlin to Brandenburg, a small provincial town. This was the beginning of the coup d’état which ended with the dissolution of the Assembly on December 5, 1848. The Neue Rheinische Zeitung, under Marx’s editorship, started a campaign to mobilise the people against the counter-revolution.”
The Marx-penned article is direct and plain: “When these two sovereign powers [King and National Assembly] are no longer able to agree or do not want to agree, they become two inimical sovereign powers. The King has the right to throw down the gauntlet to the Assembly, the Assembly has the right to throw down the gauntlet to the King. The greater right is on the side of the greater might. Power is tested in struggle. The test of the struggle is victory. Each of the two powers can prove that it is right only by its victory, that it is wrong only by its defeat.”
A few days later, from the November 12th second edition of the paper, Marx summarizes recent events to contrast in the above mentioned “Counter Revolution in Berlin”:
“ European revolution is taking a circular course. It started in Italy and assumed a European character in Paris; the first repercussion of the February revolution followed in Vienna; the repercussion of the Viennese revolution took place in Berlin. European counterrevolution struck its first blow in Italy, at Naples; it assumed a European character in Paris in June; the first repercussion of the June counter-revolution followed in Vienna; it comes to a close and discredits itself in Berlin. The crowing of the Gallic cock in Paris will once again rouse Europe.
But in Berlin the counter-revolution is bringing itself into disrepute. Everything becomes disreputable in Berlin, even counter-revolution.
In Naples the lazzaroni are leagued with the monarchy against the bourgeoisie.
In Paris the greatest struggle ever known in history is taking place. The bourgeoisie is leagued with the lazzaroni against the working class.
In Vienna we have a flock of nationalities who imagine that the counter-revolution will bring them emancipation. In addition — the secret spite of the bourgeoisie against the workers and the Academic Legion; discord within the Civil Guard itself; finally, attacks by the people supplying a pretext for the attacks by the Court.
Nothing like that is happening in Berlin. The bourgeoisie and the people are on one side and the drill-sergeants on the other.”
And then, the start of the campaign that would eventually lead to criminal charges:
“And what should we do at the present time?
We should refuse to pay taxes. A Wrangel and a Brandenburg understand — for these creatures learn Arabic from the Hyghlans — that they wear a sword and get a uniform and a salary. But where the sword, the uniform and the salary come from-that they do not understand…
The monarchy defies not only the people, but the bourgeoisie as well.
Defeat it therefore in a bourgeois manner.
How can one defeat the monarchy in a bourgeois manner?
By starving it into surrender.”
The November 15th “Impeachment of the Government” continued to try to create excitement and momentum for this tactic:
“The Guard regiments have refused to obey orders. More and more soldiers are fraternizing with the people.
Silesia and Thuringia are in revolt.
We, however, appeal to you, citizens — send money to the democratic Central Committee in Berlin. But pay no taxes to the counter-revolutionary government. The National Assembly has declared that refusal to pay taxes is justified in law. It has not yet passed a resolution on this out of consideration for the civil servants. A starvation diet will make these officials realize the power of the citizenry and will make good citizens of them.
Starve the enemy and refuse to pay taxes! Nothing is sillier than to supply a traitorous government with the means to fight the nation, and the means of all means is money.”
On November 17th, Marx wrote “Confessions of a Noble Soul” (also the the title of the sixth book of Goethe’s novel Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre.) This one I found notable because it speculates about the fate of Jewish people under counter revolution that some Jews had supported:
“And as for the Jews, who since the emancipation of their sect have everywhere put themselves, at least in the person of their eminent representatives, at the head of the counter-revolution — what awaits them?
There has been no waiting for victory in order to throw them back into their ghetto.
In Bromberg the Government is renewing the old restrictions on freedom of movement and thus robbing the Jews of one of the first of Rights of Man of 1789 the right to move freely from one place to another.”
That one concludes “The fist is the ultimate argument of the Crown, the fist will be the ultimate argument of the people.”
Next from November 22nd came another update on the anti-tax campaign in “On the Proclamation of the Brandenburg-Manteuffel Ministry about Tax Refusal”. The entire piece is so short that here it is:
“The Brandenburg-Manteuffel Ministry has issued an order to all royal administrative authorities to employ forcible measures to collect taxes.
The Brandenburg-Manteuffel Ministry, whose position is illegal, recommends coercion against the recalcitrant and mildness towards the propertyless.
It thus establishes two categories of non-payers: those who refuse to pay in order to comply with the will of the National Assembly, and those who do not pay because they are unable to pay. The intention of the Ministry is only too clear. It wants to divide the democrats; it wants to make the peasants and workers count themselves as non-payers owing to lack of means to pay, in order to split them from those not paying out of regard for legality, and thereby deprive the latter of the support of the former. But this plan will fail; the people realises that it is responsible for solidarity in the refusal to pay taxes, just as previously it was responsible for solidarity in payment of them.
The struggle will be decided between the force that pays and the force that is paid.”
In the second edition of November 26th, Marx published “Three State Trials Against the Neue Rheinische Zeitung.” These trials are not to be confused with the later ones for the alleged crime of the anti-tax campaign. Or, apparently even the “judicial proceedings against Engels, Dronke, Wolff and Marx for alleged ‘un-newspaper-like’ political offences.”
These alleged crimes were the “violent attack on the maidenly ‘delicacy’ of six royal Prussian police officers and of the king of the Cologne Public Prosecutor’s office”. Basically, don’t insult law enforcement. Oh, or the nobility, as the end notes mention: “At the end of September 1848, the Imperial Minister of Justice, Kisker, demanded that the Cologne Public Prosecutor should institute legal proceedings against the Neue Rheinische Zeitung editors for publishing a series of feature articles which ridiculed Prince Lichnowski, a reactionary deputy of the Frankfurt National Assembly, under the name of the knight Schnapphahnski.”
The stance of the paper remained defiant regardless: “In its indictment, the Imperial Ministry is said to have described the Neue Rheinische Zeitung as the worst newspaper of the ‘bad press’. For our part, we declare the imperial authority to be the most comic of all comic authorities.”
The next entry I will highlight may be the shortest ever published in Neue Rheinische Zeitung:
“LETTERS OPENED. Cologne, November 28, 11 p.m. Two of the items of correspondence that have reached us this evening, one postmarked Berne and the other Paris, have clearly been opened by an official or semi-official hand. The seal was missing. The wafers with which the letters had been re-sealed were not yet dry. Sedlnitzky, too, is making propaganda with Windischgratz.”
I enjoyed that one because though they were facing legitimate state repression, you could also imagine the same paranoia from leftists concerned about “the feds” reading their [e]mail today. And every once in a while, the paranoid happen to be correct.
Next, as mentioned in the preface, Italy (or really, struggles taking place in various Italian states) was a bright spot at this point, first highlighted in this volume by Marx’s “The Revolutionary Movement in Italy”.
“Cologne, November 29. After six months of democracy’s almost uninterrupted defeats, after a series of unprecedented triumphs for the counter-revolution, there are at last indications of an approaching victory of the revolutionary party. Italy, the country whose uprising was the prelude to the European uprising of 1848 and whose collapse was the prelude to the fall of Vienna — Italy rises for the second time. Tuscany has succeeded in establishing a democratic government, and Rome has just won a similar government for itself.”
Later, Marx concludes, optimistically (though with a cautious “almost” in the second sentence):
“Will this second resurrection of Italy within three years — like the preceding one — herald the dawn of a new upsurge of European democracy? It almost looks as if it will. For the time of counter-revolution has expired. France is about to throw herself into the arms of an adventurer in order to escape the rule of Cavaignac and Marrast; Germany is more divided than ever; Austria is overwhelmed; Prussia is on the eve of civil war. All the illusions of February and March have been ruthlessly crushed beneath the swift tread of history. Indeed, the people have nothing more to learn from any further victories of the counterrevolution!
It is up to the people, when the occasion arises, to apply the lessons of the past six months at the right moment and fearlessly.”
In early December 1848, Engels wrote “The French Working Class and the Presidential Elections.” He wrote it during his time in Switzerland (see previous entry about his walk there from Paris) and was never published — but remains an interesting look at electoral politics in a revolutionary period.
He begins, “Raspail or Ledru-Rollin? Socialist or Montagnard? That is the question which is now splitting the party of the red republic into two hostile camps. What is this dispute really all about?”
Here is where the MECW endnotes are very helpful, if you are not up to speed with the candidates of mid 19th century France: “ In view of the presidential elections in France scheduled for December 10, 1848, the party of the petty-bourgeois democrats, which had formed a bloc for a time with the petty-bourgeois socialists (Louis Blanc and others) and grouped round the newspaper La Réforme (its representatives in the Constituent and later in the Legislative Assembly called themselves Montagnards or the Mountain by analogy with the Montagnards in the Convention of 1792–94), nominated its leader, Ledru-Rollin, as a candidate for the presidency. The proletarian socialists, however, preferred their own candidate, Raspail, a well-known scientist and revolutionary with communist views. Proudhon’s followers, grouped round his newspaper Le Peuple, also supported Raspail.”
Some of Engels’ analysis of the class composition sounds pretty contemporary!: “The socialist-democratic party, even before February, consisted of two different factions; first, of the spokesmen, deputies, writers, lawyers etc., with their not inconsiderable train of petty bourgeois who formed the party of the Réforme proper; secondly, of the mass of Paris workers, who were not at all unconditional followers of the former, but, on the contrary, were very distrustful allies, and adhered more closely to them or moved farther away from them, according to whether the Réforme people acted with more resolution or with more vacillation.”
The results of the last directly elected French President until 1965 was not close though. On December 10th, Louis-Napoleon won almost every corner of the country and Raspail finished not just behind Bonaparte and Cavaignac but even of the “Mountain” candidate as well.
Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte — Bonapartist — 5,434,226 — 74.3%
Louis-Eugène Cavaignac — ”Blue” Republican — 1,448,107 — 19.8%
Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin — ”Red” Republican — 370,119 — 5.1%
François-Vincent Raspail — Socialist — 36,920 — 0.5%
Alphonse de Lamartine — Liberal — 17,210 — 0.2%
Nicolas Changarnier — Royalist — 4,790 — 0.1%
The very next entry, also an unpublished manuscript written in Switzerland by Engels, returns to “Proudhon”. Since they wrote entire lengthy sections of books on Proudhon already, I will spare a lengthier collection of the criticisms hurled again, except for the very clever final dig: “In the meantime he continued to belabour the workers, both through the Representant du Peuple — which, after bitter experiences with the rule of three, had gradually materialised and soon was transformed into the Peuple pure and simple — as well as in the clubs, in favour of his theory of happiness for all. He was not without success. On ne le comprend pas, the workers said, mais c’est un homme remarquable [you can’t understand him, but he is a remarkable man.]
On December 9th, Marx contributed The Bourgeoisie and the Counter-Revolution, one of many similarly titled takes on local events reported from Cologne. I found this one useful for this observations about the changing class character of the state:
“The aristocracy itself was largely bourgeoisified. Instead of dealing in loyalty, love and faith, it now dealt primarily in beetroot, liquor and wool. Its tournaments were held on the wool market. On the other hand, the absolutist state, which in the course of development lost its old social basis, became a restrictive fetter for the new bourgeois society with its changed mode of production and its changed requirements. The bourgeoisie had to claim its share of political power, if only by reason of its material interests. Only the bourgeoisie itself could legally assert its commercial and industrial requirements. It had to wrest the administration of these, its ‘most sacred interests’ from the hands of an antiquated bureaucracy which was both ignorant and arrogant. It had to demand control over the national wealth, whose creator it considered itself. Having deprived the bureaucracy of the monopoly of so-called education and conscious of the fact that it possesses a far superior knowledge of the real requirements of bourgeois society, the bourgeoisie had also the ambition to secure for itself a political status in keeping with its social status. To attain this aim it had to be able freely to debate its own interests and views and the actions of the government. It called this ‘freedom of the press’. The bourgeoisie had to be able to enter freely into associations. It called this the ‘right of free association’. As the necessary consequence of free competition, it had likewise to demand religious liberty and so on. Before March 1848 the Prussian bourgeoisie was rapidly moving towards the realization of all its aims.
The Prussian state was in financial difficulties. Its borrowing power was exhausted. This was the secret reason for the convocation of the United Provincial Diet. Although the government struggled against its fate and ungraciously dissolved the United Provincial Diet, lack of money and of credit facilities would inevitably have driven it gradually into the arms of the bourgeoisie. Those who are kings by the grace of God have always bartered their privileges for hard cash, as did the feudal barons. The first great act of this historic deal in all Christian Germanic states was the emancipation of the serfs; the second act was the constitutional monarchy. “L’argent n’a pas de mattre”, but the maitres cease to be maitres as soon as they are demonetized.
And so the liberal opposition in the United Provincial Diet was simply the bourgeoisie in opposition to a political form that was no longer appropriate to its interests and needs. In order to oppose the Court, the bourgeoisie had to court the people.”
On Christmas Eve, 1848 Marx published his “The Prussian Counter-Revolution and the Prussian Judiciary.” The first line is a banger: “The chief result of the revolutionary movement of 1848 is not what the peoples won, but what they lost — the loss of their illusions.” The next is exciting as well: “June, November and December of 1848 are gigantic milestones on the path to the disenchantment and disintoxication of the minds of the European peoples.” The rest is a fairly detailed take on the legal system, but it did make me wonder why that particular bolded line didn’t became a more famous Marx quote!
In “The Revolutionary Moment”, New Year’s Eve 1848, we get another classic one liner after an excellent set up:
“ Thus, the liberation of Europe, whether brought about by the struggle of the oppressed nationalities for their independence or by overthrowing feudal absolutism, depends on the successful uprising of the French working class. Every social upheaval in France, however, is bound to be thwarted by the English bourgeoisie, by Great Britain’s industrial and commercial domination of the world. Every partial social reform in France or on the European continent as a whole, if designed to be lasting, is merely a pious wish. Only a world war can break old England, as only this can provide the Chartists, the party of the organized English workers, with the conditions for a successful rising against their powerful oppressors. Only when the Chartists head the English government will the social revolution pass from the sphere of utopia to that of reality. But any European war in which England is involved is a world war, waged in Canada and Italy, in the East Indies and Prussia, in Africa and on the Danube. A European war will be the first result of a successful workers’ revolution in France. England will head the counter-revolutionary armies, just as she did during the Napoleonic period, but the war itself will place her at the head of the revolutionary movement and she will repay the debt she owes to the revolution of the eighteenth century. The table of contents for 1849 reads: Revolutionary rising of the French working class, world war.”
That one manages to have both “meats back on the menu, boys” energy and RCP’s 1979 New Year’s party poster, “Bring on the Revolutionary 80's!”
We finally made it to 1849 by the way! Phew. Now on to Marx, on January 20th, with “Montesquieu LVI.” Though the impetus of the piece is likely that of specific historical issues around the Prussian political system and municipal council of Cologne, it does give Marx an opportunity to have a foil to attack on questions of social relations and class. The selection below is a good glimpse into how Marx viewed some of these issues entering 1849:
“Every organic body consists of various component parts, each of which performs its own special function, and reciprocal interaction takes place between the organs.
“These are physiological relations.”
Montesquieu LVI cannot be denied an original talent for simplifying science. He ought to be granted a patent (without government guarantee).
The products of labor cannot be produced without labor. One cannot reap without sowing, one cannot have yarn without weaving, etc. Europe will bend in admiration before the great genius who here, in Cologne, without any aid from the Neue Preussische Zeitung has himself brought these truths to light.
In their work men enter into certain relations with one another. There takes place a division of labor which may be more or less diversified. One person bakes, another forges one person agitates, another howls, Montesquieu writes and Dumont prints. Adam Smith, acknowledge thy master!
The discoveries that labor and the division of labor are essential conditions of every human society enable Montesquieu LVI to draw the conclusion that the existence of ‘various estates’ is quite natural, that the distinction between ‘bourgeoisie and proletariat’ is a ‘big lie’, that even if a ‘revolution’ were completely to destroy the existing ‘social relations’ today, ‘relations exactly the same as the present ones will arise again’, and finally that for anyone who has ‘a sympathetic heart for the misery of his poor brothers’ and who wishes to gain the respect of Montesquieu LVI, it is absolutely necessary to elect delegates in keeping with the ideas of Manteuffel and the imposed constitution.”
Contrary to arguments about uninterrupted and therefore de facto identical “divisions of labor” appearing since ancient Egypt, Marx views history differently:
“Is it not obvious, therefore, that ‘for thousands of years the same conditions existed among all the nations on earth’ as in Prussia today, since labor and division of labor always existed in one form or another? Or is it, on the contrary, not evident that it is the continuously changing method of labor and division of labor which is constantly transforming social relations and property relations?”
Jumping ahead a little to February 1849, we have that ultimate setting for high drama, the court room speeches of “The First Trial of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung”.
The charges faced by Marx, Engels, and publisher Hermann Korff? Murder most foul! No, actually, they were charged with “insulting” Chief Public Prosecutor Zweiffel and “calumniating” [defaming] the police officers who arrested Gottschalk and Anneke* (see Volume 7.) [See these links to read about the Anneke family: 1, 2, 3.]
The MECW endnotes clarify that “Marx’s and Engels’ speeches were published in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung as part of a detailed account of the whole trial.”
Marx weaves together legal (of course), philosophical, and historical points in his speech in impressive fashion. He also contextualizes their arrests into the larger context of other events at the same time:
“It is impossible to regard the arrests in Cologne as an isolated occurrence. To be convinced of the contrary, one has only to cast a fleeting glance at the history of the period. Shortly before there was the prosecution of the press in Berlin, based on the provisions of the old Prussian Law. A few days later, on July 8, J. Wulff, President of the Düsseldorf People’s Club, was arrested, and house searches were carried out among many committee members of this club. Wulff was subsequently acquitted by the jury, as indeed at that time no political trial received the sanction of the jury. On the same date, July 8, in Munich, officers, officials and supernumerary officials were forbidden to take part in public meetings. On July 9, Falkenheim, President of the ‘Germania’ Association in Breslau, was arrested. On July 15, in the Citizens’ Association in Düsseldorf, Chief Public Prosecutor Schnaase delivered a speech containing a formal indictment of the People’s Club, the President of which had been arrested on July 8 by his order.”
His concluding paragraph sounded like a political speech (which it was) as much as a speech to a jury, and if their newspaper is to be believed, ended in a round of applause:
“And under these circumstances the public prosecution dares to assert that it is not a question of a denunciation, but of a petty malicious calumny? This view is based on a peculiar misunderstanding. As far as I am concerned, I assure you, gentlemen, that I prefer to follow the great events of the world, to analyse the course of history, than to occupy myself with local bosses, with the police and prosecuting magistrates. However great these gentlemen may imagine themselves in their own fancy, they are nothing, absolutely nothing, in the gigantic battles of the present time. I consider we are making a real sacrifice when we decide to break a lance with these opponents. But, firstly, it is the duty of the press to come forward on behalf of the oppressed in its immediate neighbourhood. And furthermore, gentlemen, the edifice of servitude has its most specific support in the subordinate political and social powers which directly confront the private life of an individual, of a living person. It is not sufficient to fight against general relationships and the highest authorities. The press must decide to enter the lists against a specific police officer, a specific Public Prosecutor, a specific Landrat. What caused the defeat of the March revolution? It reformed only the highest political summit, it left all the groundwork of this summit intact — the old bureaucracy, the old army, the old boards of prosecuting magistrates, the old judiciary which had been created, had developed and grown grey in the service of absolutism. The first duty of the press now is to undermine all the foundations of the existing political state of affairs.”
While Marx focused on the charges related to the prosecutor, Engels focused on the alleged defamation of the police. Engels also used a historical approach to the law itself, in addition to an appeal for the jury’s independence:
“Furthermore, bear in mind, gentlemen, that these articles of the law were written at a time when the censorship made it impossible to calumniate officials through the press. According to the legislator’s intention, therefore, those articles could only serve the purpose of protecting private persons, but not officials, from calumny, and in that way only have they any meaning. But owing to the fact that since the winning of freedom of the press the actions of officials also can be placed before the forum of public opinion, the point of view is essentially altered. And it is precisely here, where there are such contradictions between old legislation and new political and social conditions, it is precisely here that the jury has to intervene and by a new interpretation adapt the old law to the new conditions.”
Engels’ conclusion was strident, though the paper didn’t note if the crowd cheered- him or not:
“To sum up: You, gentlemen of the jury, have at the present moment to decide about freedom of the press in the Rhine Province. If the press is to be forbidden to report what occurs before its very eyes; if in every complicated case it has to wait until a judicial verdict has been passed on it; if it must first ask every official, from the Minister down to the policeman, whether he would feel his honour or delicacy impugned by the facts of the case being mentioned, irrespective of whether these facts are true or not; if the press is faced with the alternative of either falsifying events or remaining completely silent — then, gentlemen, freedom of the press is at an end, and if that is what you want, then pronounce us “guilty”!”
The very next entry in this volume deals is Marx’s “The Trial of the Rhenish District Committee of Democrats”, a speech delivered around February 8th and also turned into a pamphlet in spring of that year.
The speech is worth reading entirely, and with the context of the criminal proceedings. But more timeless within is the section where Marx again analyzed the class character of a state:
“The Diet represented primarily big landed property. Big landed property was indeed the foundation of medieval, feudal society. Modern bourgeois society, our own society, is however based on industry and commerce. Landed property itself has lost all its former conditions of existence, it has become dependent on commerce and industry. Agriculture, therefore, is carried on nowadays on industrial lines, and the old feudal lords have now become producers of cattle, wool, corn, Beatrice, spirits, etc., i.e., people who trade in industrial products just as any other merchant. However much they may cling to their old prejudices, they are in fact being turned into bourgeois, who manufacture as much as possible and as cheaply as possible, who buy where they can get goods at the lowest price and sell where they can obtain the highest price. The mode of living, production and income of these gentlemen therefore gives the lie to their traditional pompous notions. Landed property, as the predominant social factor, presupposes a medieval mode of production and commerce. The United Provincial Diet represented this medieval mode of production and commerce which had long since ceased to exist, and whose protagonists, though they clung to the old privileges, likewise enjoyed and exploited the advantages of the new society. The new bourgeois society, grounded on an entirely different foundation, on a changed mode of production, was bound to seize also political power, which had to be wrenched from the hands of those who represented the interests of a declining society, a political power, whose whole structure had been built up on the soil of entirely different material conditions of society. Hence the revolution. The revolution was consequently directed as much against the absolute monarchy, the supreme political expression of the old society, as against the representatives of the estates, who stood for a social system that had been long ago destroyed by modern industry or, at most, for the presumptuous ruins of the dissolved estates which bourgeois society was overtaking and pushing into the background more and more every day. How then was the idea conceived to allow the United Provincial Diet, the representative of the old society, to dictate laws to the new society which asserted its rights through the revolution?
Allegedly in order to maintain the legal basis. But what do you understand by maintaining the legal basis? To maintain laws belonging to a bygone social era and framed by representatives of vanished or vanishing social interests, who consequently give the force of law only to these interests, which run counter to the public needs. Society is not founded upon the law; this is a legal fiction. On the contrary, the law must be founded upon society, it must express the common interests and needs of society — as distinct from the caprice of the individuals — which arise from the material mode of production prevailing at the given time. This Code Napoleon, which I am holding in my hand, has not created modern bourgeois society. On the contrary, bourgeois society, which emerged in the eighteenth century and developed further in the nineteenth, merely finds its legal expression in this Code. As soon as it ceases to fit the social conditions, it becomes simply a bundle of paper. You cannot make the old laws the foundation of the new social development, any more than these old laws created the old social conditions.”
Next is “The Tax Refusal Trial”, published in the paper February 10th. And it was a victory to claim:
“ If the verdict of the jury the day before yesterday in the case against our newspaper was of great importance for the press, the acquittal yesterday of Marx, Schneider and Schapper is decisive for all tax-refusal cases brought for trial in the Rhenish courts…
Hence the case turned only on the political question: whether the accused were authorised by the decision of the National Assembly on the refusal to pay taxes to call in this way for resistance to the state power, to organise an armed force against that of the state, and to have government authorities removed and appointed at their discretion.
After a very brief consultation, the jury answered this question in the affirmative.”
Trials, trials, and more trials! Next is “Political Trial”, from the same day. I have no Marxian observation here, just an an interesting anecdote about “Pennsylvania prisons” in the endnotes (see the previous link.)
In my Introduction I already mentioned some of the troubling views of Engels in “Democratic Pan-Slavism” regarding Slavs (February 14th.) This is also where an infamous “lazy Mexicans” quote is to be found as well:
“will Bakunin accuse the Americans of a ‘war of conquest’, which, although it deals with a severe blow to his theory based on ‘justice and humanity’, was nevertheless waged wholly and solely in the interest of civilization? Or is it perhaps unfortunate that splendid California has been taken away from the lazy Mexicans, who could not do anything with it? That the energetic Yankees by rapid exploitation of the California gold mines will increase the means of circulation, in a few years will concentrate a dense population and extensive trade at the most suitable places on the coast of the Pacific Ocean, create large cities, open up communications by steamship, construct a railway from New York to San Francisco, for the first time really open the Pacific Ocean to civilization, and for the third time in history give the world trade a new direction? The ‘independence’ of a few Spanish Californians and Texans may suffer because of it, in someplaces ‘justice’ and other moral principles may be violated; but what does that matter to such facts of world-historic significance?”
Right on queue, the MECW endnotes explain how this imperialist view of Engels would change in time: “ In assessing these events in the article Engels proceeded from the general conception that it was progressive for patriarchal and feudal countries to be drawn into the orbit of bourgeois relations because, he thought, this accelerated the creation of preconditions for a proletarian revolution. In subsequent years, however, he and Marx fully understood the deplorable consequences of colonial conquests and the subjugation of backward countries by large states. In particular, having made a thorough study of the history of US aggression in Mexico and other countries of the American continent, Marx in his article ‘The Civil War in North America’ (1861) described it as expansion in the interests of the then dominant slave-owning oligarchy in the Southern States and of the bourgeois elements in the North which supported it, as a policy aimed at seizing new territories to spread slavery.”
The last newspaper article I will quote from in this Volume is “A Denunciation”, from February 23rd. Here, the paper (unclear if it is Marx or Engels?) are glad to claim the mantle of revolutionary democratic internationalism as accused:
“In reply to this foul denunciation we declare: 1) that we have never concealed our connections with the French, English, Italian, Swiss, Belgian, Polish, American and other democrats, and 2) that we ourselves produce here in Cologne the ‘revolutionary literature’ with which we actually do ‘inundate the German part of the Rhine valley’ (and not it alone!). For that we need no assistance from Paris; for several years we have been accustomed to our Parisian friends receiving more from us than we get from them.”
Appendices
On November 14th 1848, it was noted “Upon the news that Karl Marx, the rédacteur en chef of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, had received a summons to appear this morning before the examining magistrate’s court, a considerable crowd of people gathered at the Court of Appeal to demonstrate their sympathy and await the outcome. When Karl Marx reappeared he was greeted with loud applause and accompanied to the Eiser Hall, where he said a few words of thanks for the people’s sympathy.” I assume this was included as an appendices quote instead of the main section, because despite appearing in their newspaper, it may not have been Marx or Engels who wrote it.
A manuscript was created for “MANDATE OF THE LAUSANNE WORKERS’ ASSOCIATION FOR FREDERICK ENGELS” on December 8th, 1848. This is an interesting one to learn about their membership structure:
“1) The purpose of the united associations must be:
a. Foundation of a central association and a central treasury.
b. Social and political education of the workers.
c. To establish contact with the German Workers’ Committee in Leipzig, in order chiefly to strengthen the links between the workers.
2) The duty of the elected central association must be:
a. To establish contact with the Workers’ Committee in Leipzig.
b. To facilitate correspondence, mainly to distribute the paper ( Verbrüderung) issued by the Central Committee.
c. To administer the central treasury and to render its accounts every six months.
d. Immediately to inform the fraternal associations of all important events.
3) Duties of the fraternal associations to each other and to the central association:
a. Every member pays a contribution of at most 1 batza per month, while the exchange of letters is always conducted not pre-paid by either side. [A Swiss coin, equal to 30–32 pfennigs.]
b. Every branch association must issue cards to its members.
c. Every member holding a card has free entry into every association, but the card must be signed by the president of the last association of which he was a member.”
The association had 41 members at this time.
Finally, the last entry of the appendices I will reference is “DEMOCRATIC BANQUET”, a dinner event on the Rhine to celebrate the anniversary of the February revolution in France and March revolution in Germany. Here are the minutes:
“Mülheim on the Rhine, February 11 (received late). Today a democratic banquet took place here, arranged by the Workers’ Association. Members of the Cologne Workers’ and Democratic Associations were invited.
Instrumental music and songs alternated with toasts supported by lengthy speeches. Bengel, President of the local Workers’ Association, developed the connection of the present with the past in a long report.
Lucas gave a toast to the guests, especially the men who, like the rédacteur en chef of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung Karl Marx, who was present, had in words and deeds upheld the rights of the working class long before the February revolution. Schapper toasted the ‘democratic republic’.
Karl Marx spoke of the participation of the German Avorkers in the struggles in France, England, Belgium and Switzerland. He raised a toast to Gladbach, one of the few agreers a who truly represented the interests of the people. Frederick Engels toasted the Hungarians and Kossuth.
Ott of Worringen spoke about constitutional liberalism, aristocracy and democracy, Fischbach about the misery of the people and means of redress. Gladbach cast a retrospective glance at the dissolved National Assembly and in a lively report criticised its weakness, its indecision, and its lack of revolutionary understanding. Krahe, finally, spoke on the slogan of the February revolution: ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.’
The first democratic banquet in the Rhine Province was so successful that it will surely be imitated.”
