THE CIVIC GUARD BILL

[“Neue Rheinische Zeitung”
No. 51, July 21, 1848]

** Cologne, July 20. The Civic Guard is dissolved, that is the main paragraph of the bill on the establishment of the Civic Guard!¹, although it appears only at the end of it as § 121, in the modest form:

“Through the formation of the Civic Guard according to the provisions of this law, all armed corps currently belonging to the Civic Guard or existing alongside it shall be dissolved.”

The dissolution of the corps not directly belonging to the Civic Guard has been started without further ado. The dissolution of the Civic Guard itself can only be consummated under the guise of its reorganisation.

Legislative decorum compelled the inclusion in § 1 of the traditional constitutional phrase:

“The Civic Guard is destined to protect constitutional liberty and legal order.”

In order to correspond to the “essence of this destiny,” however, the Civic Guard may neither think about public affairs, nor speak about them, nor deliberate or decide upon them (§ 1), nor assemble, nor take up arms (§ 6), nor give any sign of life at all, except with high official permission. It is not the Civic Guard that “protects” the constitution from the authorities, but the authorities that protect the constitution from the Civic Guard. Thus (§ 4) it has to “comply” blindly “with the requisitions of the authorities” and to refrain from all meddling “in the functions of the communal or administrative or judicial authorities,” as from all possible reasoning. If it “refuses” passive obedience, the Lord Regierungspräsident can suspend it from “its service” for four weeks (§ 4). If it even causes the supreme displeasure, a “royal decree” can suspend it from “its service” for “six months” or even order its “dissolution,” which shall be followed only after six months by a new formation forthwith (§ 3). Thus (§ 2) “a Civic Guard shall exist in every commune of the kingdom,” namely insofar as the Lord Regierungspräsident or the King does not find occasion to decree the opposite in every commune. If the affairs of state do not belong to the “department” of the Civic Guard, the Civic Guard on the contrary belongs “to the department of the Minister of the Interior,” i.e. the Minister of Police, who is naturally its superior and, according to the “essence of his destiny,” the faithful Eckart of “constitutional liberty” (§ 5). To the extent that the Civic Guard is not ordered by the Lord Regierungspräsident and the other gentlemen officials to “protect constitutional liberty,” i.e. to carry out the opinion of the superior lords, i.e. is commanded to service, its peculiar life-task consists in executing the service regulations drawn up by a royal colonel. The service regulations are its Magna Carta, for whose protection and exercise it is, so to speak, formed. Long live the service regulations! Enrolment² in the Civic Guard finally gives occasion to make every Prussian “after completing his 24th and before passing his 50th year” swear the following oath:

“I swear loyalty and obedience to the King, the constitution and the laws of the kingdom.”

Poor constitution! How confined, how bashful, how bourgeoisly modest, with what a subaltern posture it stands there, in the middle between the King and the laws. First comes the royalist oath, the oath of the dear loyal subjects, and then comes the constitutional oath, and in the end comes an oath that has no sense at all, except the legitimist one, that besides the laws which arise from the constitution, there are still other laws which spring from royal plenitude of power. And now the good citizen belongs, from head to foot, to “the department of the Ministry of the Interior.”

The honest fellow has received the weapons and the uniform, on condition that he renounce first of all his first political rights, the right of association, etc. His task, to protect “constitutional liberty,” is solved, in accordance with the “essence of its destiny,” by his blindly executing the orders of the authorities, by exchanging the ordinary civic liberty, tolerated even under the absolute monarchy, for the passive, will-less and self-less obedience of the soldier. A fine school for training the republicans of the future, as Herr Schneider said in the Agreement Assembly!¹ What has become of our citizen? A cross between a Prussian gendarme and an English constable. But for all his losses he is consoled by the service regulations and the consciousness of obeying orders. Instead of dissolving the army into the people, wasn’t it more original to dissolve the people into the army?

It is a truly bizarre spectacle, this transformation of constitutional phrases into Prussian facts.

When Prussianism condescends to become constitutional, then constitutionalism must also condescend to become Prussian. Poor constitutionalism! Worthy Germans! For so long they have lamented that the “most sacred” promises are not fulfilled. Soon they will know only one fear, the fear of the fulfilment of the sacred promises! The people is being punished *par où il a péché*.² You demanded liberty of the press? You shall be punished with liberty of the press and receive a censorship without censors, a censorship by the parquet, a censorship by a law that finds it in the “essence of the destiny” of the press to concern itself with everything, only not with the authorities, the infallible authorities, a censorship of prison and fines. As the hart pants for fresh water, so shall you pant for the good, old, much-maligned, much-misunderstood censor, the last Roman, under whose ascetic providence you led such a comfortable and danger-free existence.

You demanded a people’s militia? You shall receive service regulations. You shall be placed at the disposal of the authorities, you shall be drilled in the military manner and schooled in passive obedience until the tears come to your eyes.

Prussian acumen has sniffed out that every new constitutional institution offers the most interesting occasion for new penal laws, new regulations, new disciplinary measures, new surveillance, new chicanery and a new bureaucracy.

More constitutional demands! More executed demands! cries the Ministry of Action. For every demand we have an action!

Demand: Every citizen shall be armed to protect “constitutional liberty.”

Answer: Every citizen henceforth belongs to the department of the Ministry of the Interior.

It would be easier to recognise the Greeks again under the animal forms into which Circe transformed them³ than the constitutional institutions under the phantasmagorial shapes into which Prussianism and its Ministry of Action bewitch them.

* * *

AFTER THE PRUSSIAN REORGANISATION OF POLAND!
THE PRUSSIAN DISSOLUTION OF THE CIVIC GUARD!

[“Neue Rheinische Zeitung”
No. 52, July 22, 1848]

** Cologne, July 21. We have seen, the “general provisions” of the bill on the Civic Guard boil down to this: The Civic Guard has ceased to exist. We shall briefly touch upon some other sections of the draft in order to distil the spirit of the “Ministry of Action,” and here too we must proceed selectively with the raw material of this pseudonymous institution. A large number of sections presuppose the new communal and district order, a new administrative division of the monarchy, etc., all entities which, as is known, still lead their hidden life only in the womb pregnant with mysteries of the Ministry of Action. Why then has the Ministry of Action preceded its bill on the reorganisation of the Civic Guard before the promised bills on the communal and district order, etc.?

In Section III we find two service lists, the service list of the honest folk and the service list of those liable to serve in the Civic Guard who are supported from public funds (§§ 14 [and 16]). The people who are supported from public funds naturally do not include the army of officials. It is known that in Prussia they form the actually productive class. The paupers, now, like the slaves in ancient Rome, are “to be called up for service only in extraordinary cases.” If the paupers, on account of their civil dependence, are as little called to protect “constitutional liberty” as the lazzaroni in Naples, do they deserve to occupy a subordinate position in this new institution of passive obedience?

Apart from the paupers, however, we find a far more important distinction between the solvent and the insolvent persons liable to serve in the Civic Guard.

But first a remark. According to § 53,

“the Civic Guard shall wear a simple service dress, uniform throughout the whole country, which is determined by the King. The service dress must not be of such a kind as to give occasion for confusion with the army.”

Naturally! The dress must be of such a kind that the army confronts the Civic Guard and the Civic Guard confronts the people, and that on such occasions as cutting down, shooting down, and similar war manoeuvres no confusion can arise. The service dress as such, however, is just as indispensable as the service list, as the service regulations. The livery of freedom is precisely the service dress. This livery gives occasion to increase considerably the costs of equipping a civic guard man, and the increased costs of this equipment give a welcome occasion to dig an infinite gulf between the bourgeois of the Civic Guard and the proletarians of the Civic Guard.

Listen:

§ 57. “For the service dress, where such exists, for the service insignia and for the weapons, each member of the Civic Guard must provide at his own expense. The commune is, however, obliged to procure these articles at its expense in such quantity as is necessary for the equipment of that part of the actually serving force which cannot bear the costs from its own means.”

§ 59. “The commune retains the right of ownership¹ over the equipment articles procured by it and may have them kept in special places outside the time of service use.”

Thus all those who cannot equip themselves from head to foot militarily – and this is the large majority of the Prussian population, it is the totality of the workers, it is a large part of the middle class –, all these are legally disarmed “outside the time of service use,” while the bourgeoisie of the Civic Guard remains in possession of arms and service dress at all times. Since this same bourgeoisie, in the shape of the “commune,” can “have all the equipment articles procured by it kept in special places,” it finds itself not only in possession of its own arms, it moreover finds itself in possession of the arms of the civic guard proletariat, and it “can” and “will,” should political collisions displeasing to it occur, refuse the handing over of the arms even for “service use.” Thus the political privilege of capital is restored in the most insidious, but in the most effective, in the most decisive form. Capital possesses the privilege of arms over against the man of small means, like the medieval feudal baron over against his bondsman.

To make the privilege effective in all its exclusiveness, according to § 56, only

“in the country and in towns of under 5,000 inhabitants the arming of the civic guard men with pike or side-arm is sufficient, and with this type of arming only a service insignia to be determined by the colonel is required instead of service dress.”

In all towns of over 5,000 inhabitants the service dress must increase the property qualification which really first places one in possession of the capability to bear arms, and with it the number of the civic guard proletariat. Just as the service dress and weapons are only lent to this proletariat, i.e. to the largest part of the population, so the right to bear arms itself is only lent to it, its existence as a guardsman is only a lent one, and – *beati possidentes*, blessed are the possessors! The moral uneasiness in which a borrowed coat envelops the individual, and, what is more, a borrowed coat which, as with the soldier, flies around in turn from one body to another along the line – this moral uneasiness is naturally the first requirement for the Romans who are called to “protect constitutional liberty.” But in contrast, will not the proud self-esteem of the solvent Civic Guard grow, and what more does one want?

And even these conditions, which make the right to bear arms illusory for the largest part of the population, are, in the interest of the propertied part, of privileged capital, again encased within new, even more restrictive conditions.

For the commune only needs to keep the equipment articles in stock for the “actually serving” part of the insolvent contingent. According to § 15, the situation with this “actually serving” part is as follows:

“In all communes where the total number of men employable for current service exceeds the twentieth part of the population, the communal representative body has the right to restrict the actually serving force to this part of the population. If it makes use of this power, it must arrange a rotation of service in such a way that all men employable for current service take their turn by and by. However, at each rotation not more than one third may leave at once; moreover all age groups must be called up simultaneously in proportion to the number of civic guard men present in them.”

And now calculate for what tiny part of the civic guard proletariat and of the total population the equipment articles are actually procured by the commune?

In our article of yesterday we saw the Ministry of Action reorganise the constitutional institution of the Civic Guard in the sense of the old Prussian, bureaucratic state. Only today do we see it at the height of its mission, see it shaping this institution of the Civic Guard in the sense of the July Revolution, in the sense of Louis-Philippe, in the sense of the epoch which crowns capital and

with drums and trumpets
does homage to its young magnificence! 210

A word to the Hansemann-Kühlwetter-Milde Ministry. Herr Kühlwetter a few days ago issued a circular against the machinations of the reaction to all Regierungspräsidenten. Whence this phenomenon?

The Ministry of Action wants to found the rule of the bourgeoisie, while at the same time concluding a compromise with the old police and feudal state. In this double-edged, contradictory task it sees at every moment the rule of the bourgeoisie which it is to found, and its own existence, outflanked by the reaction in the absolutist, feudal sense – and it will succumb to it. The bourgeoisie cannot conquer its own rule without having for the time being the entire people as an ally, without therefore appearing more or less democratically.

But to try to combine the Restoration epoch with the July epoch, the epoch which still wants to conclude a compromise with absolutism, feudalism, cabbage-Junkerdom, the

¹ See this volume, pp. 223-225. — ² wherewith it sinned.
¹ The Magna Carta of the English Constitution, of the year 1215 — ² Enrolment.
¹ In the bill: Eigentum.