Royal Road to Science — Marx Engels Collected Works Volume 9, Articles from the Neue Rheinische Zeitung
March 6 — May 19, 1849
This entry will be largely similar to the last two in structure, as MECW volumes 7–9 are, as mentioned previously, almost entirely made up of Marx and Engels journalistic work in their Neue Rheinische Zeitung. This volume covers the period of March to August 1849.
However, in content, a notable difference for this entry will be spending the majority of the focus on one specific entry that Marx published in the paper over several days — that if “Wage Labor and Capital”, a critical early contribution to his still (ever) developing critique of political economy.
The format will be as follows:
I. This Introduction, including the MECW Preface
II. My notes summarizing “Wage Labor and Capital”
III. Highlights from all other Neue Rheinische Zeitung entries, in chronological order
IV. Appendices materials and some final thoughts regarding Marx and Engel’s 1848–49 period of journalism overall
The preface for Volume 9 states “Like volumes 7 and 8, this volume consists in the main of articles written by Marx and Engels for the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, an organ of German and European democracy, and in particular of its revolutionary proletarian wing. It was during the last stage of the revolution, when the objective preconditions for uniting the proletariat and creating a proletarian mass party began to take shape, that the proletarian trend of the paper edited by Marx and Engels became especially pronounced.”
The counter-revolutionary tendencies we read about in volume 8 continued in 9, taking a specific form as the preface summarizes: “The distinctive features of the spring and summer of 1849 were the rearguard actions fought by the revolutionary forces and the increasing attacks made by the counter-revolutionaries on the people’s democratic achievements. The reactionary ruling circles in Austria, Prussia and Tsarist Russia were seeking to revive the Holy Alliance in order to crush the revolutionary movement with the help of the French monarchists and the British bourgeois and aristocratic oligarchy. At the same time the people everywhere continued to defend their political and social rights. Proletarian and democratic organisations became increasingly active in spite of police persecutions. A national liberation struggle was waged in Hungary and many parts of Italy. Peasants uprisings took place in Slovakia, Galicia and the Bukovina. A new clash between proletarian and petty-bourgeois democrats on the one hand and the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie on the other was imminent in France. All this led Marx and Engels to expect that a new revolutionary surge would soon take place in Europe, Germany included.”
On “Wage Labor and Capital”, the MECW editors provide some background on the status on what they call (in their Soviet framework)“Marxist political economy”, as well as Engels’ retroactive language updates: “Wage Labour and Capital was written at a time when Marxist political economy had not yet arrived at its mature scientific formulation. In this work Marx still uses the terms ‘labour as a commodity’, ‘value of labour’ and ‘price of labour’, which he took over from the English classical economists, though he gave these terms a new meaning. In 1891, when Engels prepared this work for a mass edition, he changed throughout the term ‘labour as a commodity’ to ‘labour power as a commodity’ etc. All these changes are given in footnotes in this volume. In the Preface to Volume II of Capital, Engels wrote that in working out the theory of surplus value in the 1850s Marx showed that ‘it is not labour which has a value. As an activity which creates value it can no more have any special value than gravity can have any special weight, heat any special temperature, electricity any special strength of current. It is not labour which is bought and sold as a commodity, but labour power. As soon as labour power becomes a commodity, its value is determined by the labour embodied in this commodity as a social product. This value is equal to the labour socially necessary for the production and reproduction of this commodity’ (Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. II, Moscow, 1974, pp. 18–19).”
Finally, it is also worth highlighting from the Preface that about half of the just over 200 works in this volume were only discovered (some never published in the newspaper in 1849) in the years leading up to the publication of this volume of the MECW in English — previously they hadn’t even been available in Russian or German even. So while at times, these volumes could be a bit of a slog for someone not obsessively interested in Hungarian revolutionary military tactics, it was a pretty notable publishing endeavor for its time.
“Wage Labour and Capital” is presented here with an important (and much later!) 1891 introduction by Engels, who explains his edits to “labour power” that I mentioned in my introduction above. For background to these edits, Engels also argues that “Marx, in the ’40s, had not yet completed his criticism of political economy. This was not done until toward the end of the fifties.” Which is interesting to the extent that increasingly I would say the evidence to the fact that Marx never “completed” his criticism of political economy, but continued to make some important revisions even during rushes to publication, even if Capital 1 at least benefits from Marx’s own blessing to go ahead with it “as is”.
Engels also states, “Therefore, I say to the reader at once: this pamphlet is not as Marx wrote it in 1849, but approximately as Marx would have written it in 1891.” This is also I think a claim that deserves some skepticism! It seems what Marx might have written in 1891 would not only differ from “Wage Labour and Capital” as edited by Engels but even differ from Capital, as he continued, for example, to revise his crisis theory as economic and political events developed.
Most of the rest of Engels’ introduction is a summary of the work, which I will now dive just into instead. And though “Wage Labour and Capital” originally ran in separate newspaper entries from April 5–8th and and on April 11, 1849 in Neue Rheinische Zeitung, I will treat it as one work while noting the different sections as we go.
Marx’s preliminary section lays out the format, goal, and even intended audience very effectively,
“We shall present the subject in three great divisions:
- The Relation of Wage-labour to Capital, the Slavery of the Worker, the Rule of the Capitalist.
- The Inevitable Ruin of the Middle Classes and the so-called Commons under the present system.
- The Commercial Subjugation and Exploitation of the Bourgeois classes of the various European nations by the Despot of the World Market — England.
We shall seek to portray this as simply and popularly as possible, and shall not presuppose a knowledge of even the most elementary notions of political economy. We wish to be understood by the workers. And, moreover, there prevails in Germany the most remarkable ignorance and confusion of ideas in regard to the simplest economic relations, from the patented defenders of existing conditions, down to the socialist wonder-workers and the unrecognized political geniuses, in which divided Germany is even richer than in duodecimo princelings. We therefore proceed to the consideration of the first problem.”
So first: what are wages? How are they determined?
In our first linen reference in a while, we read that some workers would have their wages set based on the number of yards of linen they weave, while others for setting a page of type. Despite the differences in those two occupations, the workers doing them would agree that wages are the amount of money a capitalist pay for a certain period of work OR for a certain amount of work.
Next we see one of Engels edits come into play: “Consequently, it appears that the capitalist buys their labour with money, and that for money they sell him their labour. But this is merely an illusion. What they actually sell to the capitalist for money is their labour-power.”
Marx then explains how a capitalist could spend 2 schillings to buy 20 pounds of sugar or 12 hours of labor power. “The two shillings therefore express the relation in which labour-power is exchanged for other commodities, the exchange-value of labour-power.”
So workers exchange their commodity (labour-power) for money. This is the exchange value of their labour. Wages are only a “special name” for the price of labour power.
For example, a weaver is supplied by the capitalist with yarn and a loom. She works to create linen with these tools. The capitalist sells the linen (either in advance or after the fact.) Maybe a good price or a bad price, or may it sits unsold for a while; but let’s put that aside for now. The point is, the weaver is much like the loom for the capitalist. Wages, therefore, are not a share of the worker in the commodities produced by himself.
So Marx says, “Wages are that part of already existing commodities with which the capitalist buys a certain amount of productive labour-power.”
Consequently, labour-power is a commodity which its possessor, the wage-worker, sells to the capitalist. Why does he sell it? It is in order to live.”
Marx also says this is merely the current state of things, but it wasn’t always so. Labour-power couldn’t be sold by slaves, any more than an ox could sell its labour to a farmer. The slave is a literal commodity himself. The serf was of course different as well: “The serf belongs to the soil, and to the lord of the soil he brings its fruit.” But the laborer “belongs neither to an owner nor to the soil, but eight, 10, 12, 15 hours of his daily life belong to whomsoever buys them.”
This is all pretty easy to understand, but raises its own question. “Wages, as we have seen, are the price of a certain commodity, labour-power. Wages, therefore, are determined by the same laws that determine the price of every other commodity. The question then is, How is the price of a commodity determined?”
Marx wastes no time at the beginning of the next section to explain the price of a commodity is determined “By the competition between buyers and sellers, by the relation of the demand to the supply, of the call to the offer. The competition by which the price of a commodity is determined is threefold.”
- Sellers compete with sellers — and those with the lowest prices capture more of the market, driving out opponents
- Buyers compete with buyers, causing the price of commodities to rise
- Buyers and sellers compete with each other, the winner of which is determined by the results of the previous two points (“ Industry leads two great armies into the field against each other, and each of these again is engaged in a battle among its own troops in its own ranks. The army among whose troops there is less fighting, carries off the victory over the opposing host.”)
For example, Marx says, assume there are 100 barrels of hay on the market. But there are purchasers who want 1,000 barrels of hay. Demand is 10 times that of supply (not hypothetical, as he mentions crop failure in reality.) Prices would drive up dramatically. Marx claims the opposite arrangement is more common: “Great excess of supply over demand; desperate competition among the sellers, and a lack of buyers; forced sales of commodities at ridiculously low prices.”
But how does this affect the relation to other commodities?:
“If the price of a commodity rises considerably owing to a failing supply or a disproportionately growing demand, then the price of some other commodity must have fallen in proportion; for of course the price of a commodity only expresses in money the proportion in which other commodities will be given in exchange for it. If, for example, the price of a yard of silk rises from two to three shillings, the price of silver has fallen in relation to the silk, and in the same way the prices of all other commodities whose prices have remained stationary have fallen in relation to the price of silk. A large quantity of them must be given in exchange in order to obtain the same amount of silk. Now, what will be the consequence of a rise in the price of a particular commodity? A mass of capital will be thrown into the prosperous branch of industry, and this immigration of capital into the provinces of the favored industry will continue until it yields no more than the customary profits, or, rather until the price of its products, owning to overproduction, sinks below the cost of production.
“Conversely: if the price of a commodity falls below its cost of production, then capital will be withdrawn from the production of this commodity. Except in the case of a branch of industry which has become obsolete and is therefore doomed to disappear, the production of such a commodity (that is, its supply), will, owning to this flight of capital, continue to decrease until it corresponds to the demand, and the price of the commodity rises again to the level of its cost of production; or, rather, until the supply has fallen below the demand and its price has risen above its cost of production, for the current price of a commodity is always either above or below its cost of production.”
A little later, Marx takes aim at the economists who he thinks too easily hand-wave away these situations in favor of a more rational view of these markets: “The determination of price by the cost of production is not to be understood in the sense of the bourgeois economists. The economists say that the average price of commodities equals the cost of production: that is the law. The anarchic movement, in which the rise is compensated for by a fall and the fall by a rise, they regard as an accident.”
Next comes what I found one of the most important conclusions of this pamphlet:
“We thus see that the price of a commodity is indeed determined by its cost of production, but in such a manner that the periods in which the price of these commodities rises above the costs of production are balanced by the periods in which it sinks below the cost of production, and vice versa. Of course this does not hold good for a single given product of an industry, but only for that branch of industry. So also it does not hold good for an individual manufacturer, but only for the whole class of manufacturers.
“Thus, the cost of production of simple labour-power amounts to the cost of the existence and propagation of the worker. The price of this cost of existence and propagation constitutes wages. The wages thus determined are called the minimum of wages. This minimum wage like the determination of the price of commodities in general by cost of production, does not hold good for the single individual, but only for the race. Individual workers, indeed, millions of workers, do not receive enough to be able to exist and to propagate.”
The next section deals with “The Nature and Growth of Capital.”
Immediately we get an actual definition of Capital by Marx:
“Capital consists of raw materials, instruments of labour, and means of subsistence of all kinds, which are employed in producing new raw materials, new instruments, and new means of subsistence. All these components of capital are created by labour, products of labour, accumulated labour. Accumulated labour that serves as a means to new production is capital.”
This is immediately followed by a famous passage:
“So say the economists.
“What is a Negro slave? A man of the black race. The one explanation is worthy of the other.
“A Negro is a Negro. Only under certain conditions does he become a slave. A cotton-spinning machine is a machine for spinning cotton. Only under certain conditions does it become capital. Torn away from these conditions, it is as little capital as gold is itself money, or sugar is the price of sugar.”
In production, people enter into relations not only with nature but connections with each other. For example, when firearms were added to war, the internal organization of an army had to change, and thus all of the soldiers within it. So here we also get an early use of “forces of production”, used historically to explain “Ancient society, feudal society, bourgeois (or capitalist) society, are such totalities of relations of production, each of which denotes a particular stage of development in the history of mankind.”
Back to what Capital is or isn’t: “But though every capital is a sum of commodities — i.e., of exchange values — it does not follow that every sum of commodities, of exchange values, is capital.”
This section concludes with a key transition,
“How then does a sum of commodities, of exchange values, become capital?
“Thereby, that as an independent social power — i.e., as the power of a part of society — it preserves itself and multiplies by exchange with direct, living labour-power.
“The existence of a class which possesses nothing but the ability to work is a necessary presupposition of capital.
“It is only the dominion of past, accumulated, materialized labour over immediate living labour that stamps the accumulated labour with the character of capital.
“Capital does not consist in the fact that accumulated labour serves living labour as a means for new production. It consists in the fact that living labour serves accumulated labour as the means of preserving and multiplying its exchange value.”
Next is “The Relation of Wage-Labour to Capital”, tying together the previous sections.
It again starts very directly, “What is it that takes place in the exchange between the capitalist and the wage-labourer?
The labourer receives means of subsistence in exchange for his labour-power; the capitalist receives, in exchange for his means of subsistence, labour, the productive activity of the labourer, the creative force by which the worker not only replaces what he consumes, but also gives to the accumulated labour a greater value than it previously possessed.”
Marx uses a few examples, of which I picked the latter two, to prove his point:
“ In the winter of 1847, in consequence of bad harvest, the most indispensable means of subsistence — grains, meat, butter, cheese, etc. — rose greatly in price. Let us suppose that the workers still received the same sum of money for their labour-power as before. Did not their wages fall? To be sure. For the same money they received in exchange less bread, meat, etc. Their wages fell, not because the value of silver was less, but because the value of the means of subsistence had increased.
Finally, let us suppose that the money price of labour-power remained the same, while all agricultural and manufactured commodities had fallen in price because of the employment of new machines, of favorable seasons, etc. For the same money the workers could now buy more commodities of all kinds. Their wages have therefore risen, just because their money value has not changed.”
Thus we have nominal wages (the amount of money the labourer sells to the capitalist), and real wages (the amount of commodities this money can buy.)
So “Wages are determined above all by their relations to the gain, the profit, of the capitalist. In other words, wages are a proportionate, relative quantity.”
The next section is “The General Law that Determines the Rise and Fall of Wages and Profits.” This also quickly moves to a key conclusion of Marx:
“The selling price of the commodities produced by the worker is divided, from the point of view of the capitalist, into three parts:
- First, the replacement of the price of the raw materials advanced by him, in addition to the replacement of the wear and tear of the tools, machines, and other instruments of labor likewise advanced by him;
- Second, the replacement of the wages advanced; and
- Third, the surplus leftover — i.e., the profit of the capitalist.”
A little later, “What, then, is the general law that determines the rise and fall of wages and profit in their reciprocal relation?
They stand in inverse proportion to each other. The share of (profit) increases in the same proportion in which the share of labour (wages) falls, and vice versa. Profit rises in the same degree in which wages fall; it falls in the same degree in which wages rise.”
The rest of this section is Marx arguing against an imagined critic who raises exceptions to what he said above. I judge that he did a pretty good job anticipating these criticisms so early, though he would elaborate in more detail in Capital on the issues raised regarding circulation and technological advances.
The second to last section is “The Interests of Capital and Wage-Labour are diametrically opposed Effect of growth of productive Capital on Wages”.
This deals with something that has remained a controversy in “development economics” and “the actually existing socialist states” to this day. Which is to say, shouldn’t the workers support the growth of capital to help improve their own lot?
Marx says, “To say that ‘the worker has an interest in the rapid growth of capital’, means only this: that the more speedily the worker augments the wealth of the capitalist, the larger will be the crumbs which fall to him, the greater will be the number of workers than can be called into existence, the more can the mass of slaves dependent upon capital be increased.”
Likewise, he adds later,
“If capital grows rapidly, wages may rise, but the profit of capital rises disproportionately faster. The material position of the worker has improved, but at the cost of his social position. The social chasm that separates him from the capitalist has widened.
“Finally, to say that ‘the most favorable condition for wage-labour is the fastest possible growth of productive capital’, is the same as to say: the quicker the working class multiplies and augments the power inimical to it — the wealth of another which lords over that class — the more favorable will be the conditions under which it will be permitted to toil anew at the multiplication of bourgeois wealth, at the enlargement of the power of capital, content thus to forge for itself the golden chains by which the bourgeoisie drags it in its train.”
It seems to this reader an important observation by Marx in 1848 that could be applied to, say, the defenders of the plans of the Communist Party of China in 2021?
The last section is “Effect of Capitalist Competition on the Capitalist Class the Middle Class and the Working Class”. This has a crucial observation on the systemic nature of how capitalists are forced to behave a certain way in capitalism:
“No matter how powerful the means of production which a capitalist may bring into the field, competition will make their adoption general; and from the moment that they have been generally adopted, the sole result of the greater productiveness of his capital will be that he must furnish at the same price, 10, 20, 100 times as much as before. But since he must find a market for, perhaps, 1,000 times as much, in order to outweigh the lower selling price by the greater quantity of the sale; since now a more extensive sale is necessary not only to gain a greater profit, but also in order to replace the cost of production (the instrument of production itself grows always more costly, as we have seen), and since this more extensive sale has become a question of life and death not only for him, but also for his rivals, the old struggle must begin again, and it is all the more violent the more powerful the means of production already invented are. The division of labour and the application of machinery will therefore take a fresh start, and upon an even greater scale.”
The same would go for workers as machinery. An enlarged scale of exploitation in the division of labour. Marx describes this as a “whisper into the ears of the capitalist, ‘go on, go on’”. Or in another translation, “a constant shouting of ‘march’, ‘march.’”
Towards the end, Marx turns to current examples of these relations in social reality:
“But in place of the man who has been dismissed by the machine, the factory may employ, perhaps, three children and one woman! And must not the wages of the man have previously sufficed for the three children and one woman? Must not the minimum wages have sufficed for the preservation and propagation of the race? What, then, do these beloved bourgeois phrases prove? Nothing more than that now four times as many workers’ lives are used up as there were previously, in order to obtain the livelihood of one working family.
“To sum up: the more productive capital grows, the more it extends the division of labour and the application of machinery; the more the division of labour and the application of machinery extend, the more does competition extend among the workers, the more do their wages shrink together.
In addition, the working class is also recruited from the higher strata of society; a mass of small business men and of people living upon the interest of their capitals is precipitated into the ranks of the working class, and they will have nothing else to do than to stretch out their arms alongside of the arms of the workers. Thus the forest of outstretched arms, begging for work, grows ever thicker, while the arms themselves grow every leaner.”
Finally, in the second to last paragraph, we see some of that great Marx taste for dramatic prose that would be used so effectively in Capital:
“But capital not only lives upon labour. Like a master, at once distinguished and barbarous, it drags with it into its grave the corpses of its slaves, whole hecatombs of workers, who perish in the crises.”
Or in another translation: “But capital does not only live upon labour. A lord, at once aristocratic and barbarous, it drags with it into the grave the corpses of its slaves, whole hecatombs of workers who perish in the crises.”
Though he wrote “to be continued”, any other plans for this series was put aside during the frantic events happening in Europe at the time. Despite being edited into a popular pamphlet, this remained unfinished work, and the critique of political economy would continue another day.
In conclusion, this series is a more complete (and meant to be published!) work than either the 1844 “economic manuscripts” of Paris or the 1847 lecture notebook titled “Wages.”
Another thing I found notable in “Wage Labor and Capital” is how you get a few related but somewhat distinct arguments for the first time:
- Capitalism is harmful to some capitalists (especially on the wrong side of “anarchic” markets) even if benefitting the capitalist class as a whole. For example, even if the management of New Balance truly preferred to make shoes in New England to southeast Asia, they ultimately will necessarily shift production to cheaper labor markets to simply avoid being put out of business by significantly cheaper competitors. It’s the nature of the system they exist in, an argument for a concept of Marxism as a very broad analysis of a system of domination actually enforced on all.
- That there is a controversial concept of what would later be further developed and called “socially necessary labor time” constraining producers ability to reduce wages below a certain level, which helps regulate value in the exchange. But Marx also writes that millions of workers are not even paid the “minimum wage” needed to even exist and raise a family because the capitalist system only needs to generate this reproductive wage at the aggregate.
- The “golden chains” concept I elaborated on above, pushing back against the “rising tide lifts all boats” style argument (one made by John F Kennedy and “Dengists” alike.)
III. Main text, historical newspaper articles
I will continue here having assumed any reader has also read MECW V 7 and 8, or at least my notes about them, otherwise it’d take a while to summarize the various events of Europe at the time.
The first entry in this volume, all of them chronological and noted by published date, is “The State of Trade” from March 7th, 1849. It was unknown if this was by Marx or Engels. It starts with quote a memorable quote: “An Englishman is never more unhappy than when he does not know what to do with his money.” Then it continues, “Therein lies the secret of all grandiose speculations, all profit-making enterprises, but it is also the secret of all bankruptcies, all financial crises and commercial depressions.
“In 1840, 1841 and subsequent years, it was the new Asian markets, besides the customary commerce with the European continent, which claimed a special share of English export trade. Manufacturers and exporters had every reason to greet Sir Henry Pottinger [2] on the Manchester stock exchange with loud cheers. But the good times quickly passed. Canton, Bombay and Calcutta soon overflowed with unsalable goods, and capital, which no longer found any outlet in that direction, for a change once more sought application inside the country; it was poured into railway construction and so opened up a field for speculation in which the latter was soon rampant to a quite unprecedented extent.”
As was often the case in these entries, the author(s) also take British commercial success as a chance to throw some shade at a backwards “Germany”, optimistically looking for the end of their aristocratic slog:
“And the English are once more working a full day in all the mines, foundries, spinning mills, and in all their ports, not because a certain Prince Windischgrätz orders the summary shooting of the Viennese people, — no, they are at work because the markets of Canton, New York and St. Petersburg wish to be supplied with manufactures, because California is opening up a new market which the speculators regard as inexhaustible, because the bad harvests of 1845 and 1846 were followed by two good harvests in 1847 and 1848, because the English have given up railway speculation, because money has returned to its customary channels, and the English will go on working…until there is a new trade crisis.
“Above all, we must not forget that it was by no means the monarchical countries that in recent years were the chief source of employment for English industry. The country which has almost continuously placed the most colossal orders for English goods and whose demand at the present time, too, is able to empty the markets of Manchester, Leeds, Halifax, Nottingham, Rochdale, and all the great emporia of modern industry, and which can enliven the ocean with its ships — is a republican country, the United States of North America. And it is just now that these states are prospering most of all, when all the monarchical states of the world are collapsing.”
On March 11th, Marx took aim at what the current day controversy refers to as “grifters”, directly with his usual sharp strokes in “The March Association”: “To the dirty remark of the profit-greedy competition-goaded patriots about ‘the importance of the paid announcements of a newspaper as a source of income for the whole enterprise’, we, of course, do not reply. The Neue Rheinische Zeitung has always differed from the patriots not only generally but also in that it has never regarded political movements as a territory for swindlers or a source of income.”
On March 15th, Engels continued the journal’s work on “The Model Republic”, one of several sarcastically and same-named pieces on Switzerland while he was exiled there after a very long walk from Paris. You may remember in previous entries similar titles for entries on Belgium, another “model Republic” they found plenty of room to criticize. Here Engels takes to task the allegedly sleepy land of peaceful clockmakers where there is no nobility, modest taxes, and according to Engels — a “Swiss proletariat [that] is still largely what one describes as lumpenproletariat, prepared to sell themselves to anyone who will make extravagant promises. The clergy and the aristocrats do not of course remind the starving people of the times when the peasant was forced to pay tithes to the parish and the lord of the manor; they only ask, what is the present government doing for you? And the most loyal supporters of the Government are unable to reply. If the proletariat in Switzerland were strong enough and sufficiently advanced to form an independent party then opposition to the present radicalism would certainly be justified; under the present circumstances, however, every stand that is taken against the radical politicians amounts to a concession towards the conservatives.”
The peaceful Swiss cantons also were tied to “re-enlistment treaties” where mercenaries from Switzerland could be sent to monarchist countries to be used as counter-revolutionary shock troops as we saw in previous volumes. Specifically in 1848 this meant Berne sent troops used against counter-revolutionaries to Naples, causing outrage among Swiss progressives, eventually leading to their cancelation.
Around this time, Engels wrote a manuscript for the paper which was not published at the time, “Military Dictatorship in Austria.”
“The year 1848 was the year of disappointment with revolutionary memories, illusions and other phrases. In 1848 the insurgent people of half Europe let themselves be put off with phrases, colourful rags, addresses and processions; and it was quite consistent that the revolution of 1848 should end in universal counter-revolutionary and military dictatorship.
…
“1849 is the year of disillusion with the omnipotence of military dictatorship.
The military dictatorship comes to grief above all owing to two things: firstly, its inability to solve any of the complications; secondly, its costliness. It collapses as soon as it has to organise or as soon as it has to find regular sources of finance.”
The manuscript here also speaks of how conservative Austria could only be saved again by conservative Russia, though I found the bold section above an interesting longer term argument by Engels.
On March 30th, an Engels piece ran called “The Debate on the Address in Berlin.”
It contains a strongly worded criticism of the parliamentary left of the “second chamber” of the Prussian Provincial Diet, especially the “Wailers” who referred to more radical republican democrats as agitators”:
“The sole feature of interest in the whole debate is the puerile arrogance of the Right and the cowardly collapse of the Left.
…
“The gentlemen of the Left…moderate their claims to the same extent as those of the Right increase theirs. In all their speeches, one can discern the broken spirit that is the result of bitter disappointment, that dejection of the ex-member of the Assembly which first let the revolution sink in the mire and afterwards, drowning in the morass of its own creation, perished with the painful cry: The people are not yet mature enough!
“Even the resolute members of the Left, instead of putting themselves into direct opposition to the whole Assembly, do not abandon the hope of achieving something in the Chamber and through the Chamber, and of winning a majority for the Left. Instead of adopting an extra-parliamentary position in the parliament, the only honourable one in such a Chamber, they make one concession after another to parliamentary expediency; instead of ignoring the constitutional point of view as far as possible, they actually seek an opportunity of coquetting with it for the sake of peace.
…
“The Left suffered the fate it deserved.”
Engels continued his role as the military analyst and commentator, including “The War in Italy and Hungary” from March 28th.
At this time, the King of Sardinia cancelled their armistice with Austria from August of 1848, and began a new war. The Army of Piedmont had maintained counter-revolutionary military leadership and lost in only three days despite national excitement. This lead to the restoration of Austrian rule in Northern Italy. However briefly, this meant there were two fields of conflict for Austria, as the battles continued we have read about in previous volumes with Hungary.
Engels of course maintained his left line, that the only path to victory for oppressed Italians was a revolutionary direction for the war:
“There is only one means to counter the treachery and cowardice of the Government: revolution. And perhaps it is precisely a new breach of his word by Charles Albert, and a new act of perfidy by the Lombard nobility and bourgeoisie, that are required for the Italian revolution to be carried through and, simultaneously with it, the Italian war for independence. But then woe to the traitors!”
Engels continued with similar themes on March 31st with “More Russian Troops.” Correctly predicting the Russian intervention yet again, the entire piece is short, therefore pasted entirely below:
“Following Bem’s victories, another 20,000 Russians have marched into Transylvania.
“The most recent news from Transylvania brings confirmation of the Magyars’ victory. In Hermannstadt, Bem had the building of the General Command and the dwelling of the Saxon Count battered down; after this, he attacked and dispersed the national guards with grape-shot, and then gave the town over to plunder for a couple of hours. He then withdrew from the town and went on to Schlossberg, where he wrought even worse havoc. Kaschau has again been occupied by a Magyar raiding party, and in Schemnitz, too, Honveds[158] have once again turned up.”
Over the next few days, Engels wrote about “The Defeat of the Piedmontese” that I mentioned above.
“The defeat of the Piedmontese is more important than all the German imperial tricks taken together. It is the defeat of the whole Italian revolution. After the defeat of Piedmont comes the turn of Rome and Florence.”
His predictions, the end notes explain, were again correct:
“As Engels expected, the defeat at Novara and the conclusion of a new armistice between Austria and Piedmont cardinally changed the balance of forces in Italy. in favour of the home and foreign counter-revolution. In Florence, the revolutionary events in January and February 1849 led to the overthrow of Grand Duke Leopold If and the proclamation of a republic in Tuscany (the official inauguration of a republic did not take place owing to sabotage by moderate liberals). On April 11, a counter-revolutionary coup d’état took place, the democratic provisional government of Guerazzi was overthrown, and the Grand Duke returned to power. He entered the city on May 25, 1849, together with Austrian troops.
“The Roman Republic, proclaimed on February 9, 1849, had to wage a grim struggle against counter-revolutionary insurgents instigated by the Catholic clergy, against Neapolitan troops, Austrians and the French expeditionary corps sent to Italy on April 6, 1849 to restore the power of Pope Pins I X over Rome. On July 3, 1849 the Republic fell under the blows of the foreign interventionists.”
Engels mentions — as a schooled artillery officer would be able to do — various details about brigades and their commanders, attacks on certain flanks, and fortifications. But his conclusions always ran to the political, not towards the military strategy he peppers within. Piedmont was betrayed, Austria won.
Jumping forward a month or so, we get to April 15th’s “Statement” by “Citizens Marx, Schapper, Anneke and Wolff”. This “statement” was that “We consider that the present organisation of the Democratic Associations includes too many heterogeneous elements for any possibility of successful activity in furtherance of the cause.
“We are of the opinion, on the other hand, that a closer union of the Workers’ Associations is to be preferred since they consist of homogeneous elements, and therefore we hereby from today withdraw from the Rhenish District Committee of Democratic Associations.”
This association they were leaving was the very same one Marx had managed to have some significant influence in only a year earlier, especially as tax refusal campaign against the coup spread beyond the Rhine proper. But, at least according to the end notes (I would be interested in any correction if this is largely false), Marx believed it was important to take his Communist League allies out of the Rhenish Committee formally to focus on uniting with other workers organizations, while still calling for broad unity with democrats against counter revolution generally.
On April 22nd, Engels gets a “I told you so” moment again regarding “The Russians”: “When the Neue Rheinische Zeitung began to be published almost eleven months ago, it was the first newspaper to point out the concentration of Russian armies on our Eastern frontier. At that time many virtuous citizens spoke of exaggeration, of unnecessary cries of alarm etc.
“It has become clear whether we were exaggerating or not. The Russians, who at first were merely protecting their frontiers, passed more and more to the offensive as the counter-revolution achieved successes. The June victory in Paris brought them to Jassy and Bucharest; the fall of Vienna and Pest brought them to Hermannstadt and Kronstadt.”
Of course, as mentioned in earlier entries, I think Engels’ anti-Slavic prejudice at times got the best of him here!: “That is how things look on the other side of the frontier. Half a million armed and organised barbarians are only waiting for an opportunity to fall on Germany and turn us into feudal serfs of the orthodox Tsar.”
On a very different topic, we get our further discussions of Ferdinand Lasalle on April 27th — or again, an attempted expose of the police prosecution of Lassalles specifically. He had requested help from the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, as the endnotes explain, “Marx and Engels also took part in the efforts of the Cologne democratic organisations to induce the legal authorities to speed up the investigation of the case. Subsequently, the newspaper several times published material exposing this trial…which was held on May 3 and 4. The jury acquitted Lassalle.”
Another piece, also titled “Lasalle” was printed on May Day 1849. Engels says “Rarely has anything more inconsistent, more contradictory and more incomprehensible been fabricated than this decision of the indictment board to send the case for trial.”
Two days later, another entry called “Lasalle” was published. This one gets to the heart of the issues of revolutionary speech:
“The secret of the whole court action against Lassalle consists in its being an arbitrary trial of a troublesome agitator. In a concealed form it is a trial on a charge of ‘stirring up discontent’ such as prior to the March days we, too, had the pleasure of enjoying here on the Rhine. In the same way, the trial instituted against Weyers is in a concealed form a trial on a charge of Lèse-majesté. Weyers said: ‘death to the King’ and ‘the King ought not to be allowed to have the crown a quarter of an hour longer’. And these few words, quite innocent from the point of view of the Code pénal, are similarly alleged to contain a ‘direct incitement to take up arms’!
“And even if Lassalle had actually called for arming against the royal power, what would this mean? Let us adopt the constitutional standpoint and speak in accordance with constitutional ideas. At that time, in November, was it not the duty of every citizen not only to ‘call for arming’, but to take up arms himself in defence of the constitutional representatives of the people against a perfidious ‘royal Government’ which, with the aid of soldiers, drove the Assembly of people’s representatives from one building to another, dispersed their sittings, allowed soldiers to use their official documents as spills and for lighting stoves, and finally sent the representatives packing? According to the decisions of the United Diet, and according to Herr Camphausen’s famous ‘legal basis’, not to mention the achievements of March 19, was not the Assembly an entity on a footing of ‘equality’ with the Crown? And should one not be allowed to defend such an Assembly against encroachments by the so-called ‘royal Government’?
“Moreover, we have seen that it has become second nature for the ‘royal Government’ to bestow kicks on the people’s representatives. Hardly two months after the convocation of the imposed Chambers this same ‘royal Government’ disperses them at the first objectionable decision — disperses the very Chambers which were supposed to revise the Constitution! The Chambers have now recognised the validity of the imposed Constitution, and now we know still less whether we have a Constitution or not. Who knows what will be imposed on us tomorrow?”
On the same couple of days as these last two entries, Engels also wrote and “The Dissolution”:
“May 1. Deputies who arrived here yesterday from Berlin report that the Chambers have been dissolved in Dresden as well.
Hanover, Berlin, Dresden — in Munich there has so far only been an adjournment — do you, honest German citizen, now realise what tune is to be played?”
A few days later on May 5th, Engels had printed “Longing for a State of Siege.” Some selections below, as Cologne prepared for the next stage of counter revolution.
First, the rumors:
“It is still being rumoured that on Sunday, on the occasion of the district congresses of the various parties a state of siege will once again be imposed on the good city of Cologne.
“From all kinds of small preparations by the military authorities, it is clear that at any rate they are preparing themselves for all eventualities. That is not all. Measures are being taken which definitely indicate a desire to provoke disturbances.
“Why otherwise has ‘My glorious army’ been suddenly permitted, to the great astonishment of the soldiers themselves, to remain out of barracks until 10 p.m instead of 9 p.m.?
“There is likewise again talk of arrests. We are quite ready to believe in it. The desire for such action has been in existence for a long time. Moreover, it is known that already on one occasion by means of such arrests the plan of provoking disorders proved completely successful.”
Then, the advice:
“We repeat, it is of the utmost importance that the democrats, and especially the workers of Cologne do everything possible so that tomorrow the powers that are eager for a state of siege will not be given even the slightest excuse that will serve them as a cover for their acts of violence.
And finally, a critique:
“It is primarily the bourgeoisie that is endangered by the latest counter-revolutionary actions. The bourgeoisie has convened the congress of the towns. Let the bourgeoisie have the honour of saying the first word.”
But the year in Prussia wasn’t entirely counter-revolutionary repression, as we read of a popular uprising of workers and petty bourgeois in “The Situation in Elberfeld.” The revolutionary participation of Engels as a commander lead to his trial, which is covered in Volume 10 of the MECW. The endnotes here are critical in the background of what was happening:
“The Elberfeld uprising of workers and petty bourgeois broke out on May 8, 1849 and served as a signal for armed struggle in a number of cities in the Rhine Province (Dusseldorf, Iserlohn, Solingen and others) in defence of the imperial Constitution. The immediate occasion for the uprising was the attempts by the Prussian Government to use troops to suppress the revolutionary movement on the Rhine, to destroy democratic organisations and the press, and to disarm the army reserve troops it had itself called up which disobeyed its orders and supported the demand for the imperial Constitution. Engels played an active part in the uprising, having arrived in Elberfeld on May 11 together with a workers’ detachment from Solingen (later legal proceedings were instituted against him for this — see present edition, Vol. 10). Engels’ efforts to secure the disbandment of the bourgeois civic militia, the imposition of a war tax on the bourgeoisie, extensive armament of the workers in order to form the core of the Rhenish revolutionary army and to unite local uprisings, met with opposition from the Committee of Public Safety which was dominated by the representatives of the local bourgeoisie. Under pressure from bourgeois circles, Engels was deported from the city on the morning of May 15. As a result of secret negotiations between a deputation from the city bourgeoisie and the Government and of the capitulatory stand taken by the Committee of Public Safety, workers’ detachments including those which came to their support from other places (the Berg Country, etc.) were forced out of the city on the night of May 16 (some managed to break through to the south, to the insurgent Palatinate) and the previous order was restored in Elberfeld. The defeat of the Elberfeld uprising led to the triumph of reaction throughout Rhenish Prussia.”
Engels must have still been feeling the revolutionary fervor on May 9th, in the midst of the above events writing an inspired “The Counter-Revolutionary Offensive and the Successes of the Revolution.” After some comments about the ground lost in the German struggle, Engels expands the field to Europe as a whole: “While the Magyar revolution is gaining one victory after another, and after the next decisive battle (which was to have taken place on May 5 or 6 at Pressburg) will move straight on Vienna and liberate the city, France suddenly enters a stage when the movement is developing again openly and in broad daylight. The underground development of the past months comes to a close; the defeat of the French army at Rome has exposed and discredited the entire policy of the present government. The people reappears upon the scene — the people, the ultimate, supreme judge. Whether it happens at the elections or in the course of an open revolution, the French people will shortly give an impetus to the movement, which all Europe will feel.
The European dynasties will soon see that the chosen people of the revolution has not changed; the French revolution of 1849 will speak to them, not in Lamartinian phrases, but in the language of guns.”
IV. Appendices, and Conclusions for volumes 7- 9
The “articles and statements” and “appendices” contain yet more trials, tribulations, and expulsions for our brave writers/editors/revolutionaries.
In “To the Editors of La Presse” and its end, we learn (in the endnotes) that “In view of the great financial and organisational difficulties which arose after the introduction of the state of siege in Cologne on September 26, 1848 and the suspension of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, Marx was compelled to take financial responsibility for the newspaper’s publication upon himself; he invested in it all the cash he had and thus, in fact, became its owner.”
Marx writes in this letter that “Since the Prussian Government could not see any possibility of legally prohibiting the newspaper it had recourse to a strange measure: It got rid of the owner, that is to say, it forbade me to reside in Prussia. As regards the legality of this measure, this will be decided by the Prussian Chamber of Deputies which is ‘ shortly to meet…
“After being forbidden to stay in Prussia, I went first of all to the Grand Duchy of Hesse, in which — as in other parts of Germany — I was not forbidden to reside.”
A letter from the royal government of Cologne to the Rhine Province asked for additional evidence against “Carl Marx”, stemming from a member of the Communist League being raided by secret police who found hand grenades in his home. Ultimately they lacked evidence to move forward immediately against other members of the League but Marx was expelled from Cologne. Marx, Dronke, and Weerth were not Prussian subjects and were forced to leave Prussia entirely.
Meanwhile, Engels was expelled from Elberfeld, and headed for the Rhine Palatinate. Marx left for Paris.
At this point the Neue Rheinische Zeitung ceased to exist, like the old paper before it. The MECW 7–9 saga of the newspaper ends in another Trial for Libeling Deputies of the German National Assembly.
After a roughly dozen twists and turns just in these first nine volumes, the endless drama of Marx’s physical location is at least finally nearing its end: “On July 19, 1849 in an atmosphere of repression against democrats and socialists following the events of June 13 in Paris, the French authorities informed Marx that an order had been issued for his expulsion from Paris to Morbihan, a swampy and unhealthy place in Brittany. Marx protested and the expulsion was delayed, but on August 23 he again received a police order to leave Paris within 24 hours. At the end of August, Marx set off for London where he spent the rest of his life.”
The entire experience of volumes 7, 8, and 9 for me has been important for a few reasons:
- It provides biographical background to a level of detail that could only otherwise be gleaned from an in-depth biographical book
- It provides a historical context for the conclusions Marx and Engels would soon draw about the failures of the revolutions of 1848
- It gives us a glimpse into their earliest attempts at being revolutionary activists in organizations dealing with state repression and active and even armed class conflict
- It is a time of their life at least personally I had less understanding of than either the truly “Young Marx” (and his philosophical works) or the later attempts at both the critique of political economy and First International debates.
It is, however, not a particularly time efficient way to learn these things. Do I think it’s particularly important for a communist, socialist, Marxist, whatever to read these volumes? I would lean towards “no”, especially if someone has access to other good biographical materials, and if they also made sure to read “Wage Labor and Capital” on its own. I found it rewarding enough though I’m happy to move beyond it. I suspect I may be drawing similar conclusions about some of the US Civil War journalism that is to come?
