The preceding passage* was written over four years ago. It is 
still valid today. What was true after Sadowa and the partition of 
Germany is being reconfirmed after Sedan and the establishment 
of the Holy German Empire of the Prussian nation.*” So little do 
“world-shaking” grand performances of state** in the realm of 
so-called high politics change the direction of the historical 
movement. 

What these grand performances of state are able to do, 
however, is to accelerate this movement. And in this respect, the 
authors of the above-mentioned “world-shaking events” have had 
involuntary successes, which they themselves surely find most 
undesirable but which, all the same, for better or for worse, they 
have to accept. 

The war of 1866 shook the old Prussia to its foundations. After 
1848 it had a hard time bringing the rebellious industrial 
element—bourgeois as well as_ proletarian—of the Western 
provinces,” under the old discipline again; still, this had been 
accomplished, and the interests of the Junkers of the Eastern 
provinces‘ again became, next to those of the army, the dominant 
interests in the state. In 1866 almost all Northwest Germany 
became Prussian. Apart from the irreparable moral injury the 
Prussian crown by the grace of God suffered owing to its having 
swallowed three other crowns by the grace of God,*” the centre of 

gravity in the monarchy now shifted considerably to the west. The 
five million Rhinelanders and Westphalians were reinforced, first, 
by the four million Germans annexed directly, and then by the six 
million annexed indirectly, through the North German Confedera- 
tion.*° And in 1870 there were further added the eight million 
Southwest Germans,*”’ so that in the “New Empire”, the fourteen 
and a half million old Prussians (from the six East Elbian 
provinces, including, besides, two million Poles) were confronted 
by some twenty-five million who had long outgrown the old 
Prussian Junker-feudalism. In this way the very victories of the 
Prussian army shifted the entire basis of the Prussian state 
structure; the Junker domination was becoming increasingly 
intolerable even for the government. At the same time, however, 
the extremely rapid industrial development caused the struggle 
between bourgeois and worker to supersede the struggle between 
Junker and bourgeois, so that internally also the social foundations 
of the old state underwent a complete transformation. The basic 
condition for the monarchy, which had been slowly rotting since 
1840, was the struggle between nobility and bourgeoisie, in which 
the monarchy held the balance. From the moment when it became 
necessary instead of protecting the nobility against the onrush of 
the bourgeoisie to protect all the propertied classes against the 
onrush of the working class, the old, absolute monarchy had to go 
over completely to the form of state expressly devised for this 
purpose: the Bonapartist monarchy. This transition of Prussia to 
Bonapartism I have already discussed elsewhere (The Housing 
Question, Part 2, pp. 26 et seq.*). What I did not have to stress 
there, but what is very essential here, is that this transition was the 
greatest progress made by Prussia since 1848, so much had Prussia 
lagged behind in modern development. It was, to be sure, still a 
semi-feudal state, whereas Bonapartism is, at any rate, a modern 
form of state which presupposes the abolition of feudalism. 
Hence, Prussia has had to begin to get rid of its numerous 
survivals of feudalism, to sacrifice Junkerdom as such. This, 
naturally, is being done in the mildest possible form and to the 
favourite tune of: Immer langsam voran!? Take the notorious 
district regulations.“ It abolishes the feudal privileges of the 
individual Junker in relation to his estate only to restore them as 
privileges of the totality of big landowners in relation to the entire 

district. The substance remains, being merely translated from the 
feudal into the bourgeois dialect. The old Prussian Junker is being 
forcibly transformed into something resembling an English squire, 
and need not have offered so much resistance because the one is 
as stupid as the other. 

Thus it has been the peculiar fate of Prussia to complete its 
bourgeois revolution—began in 1808 to 1813 and advanced to 
some extent in 1848—1in the pleasant form of Bonapartism at the 
end of this century. If all goes well and the world remains nice 
and quiet, and all of us live long enough, we may see—perhaps in 
1900—that the government of Prussia will actually have abolished 
all feudal institutions and that Prussia will finally have arrived at 
the point where France stood in 1792. 

The abolition of feudalism, expressed positively, means the 
establishment of bourgeois conditions. As the privileges of the 
nobility fall, legislation becomes more and more bourgeois. And 
here we come to the crux of the relation of the German 
bourgeoisie to the government. We have seen that the government 
is compelled to introduce these slow and petty reforms. However, 
in its dealings with the bourgeoisie it portrays each of these small 
concessions as a sacrifice made to the bourgeois, as a concession 
wrung from the crown with the greatest difficulty, for which 
they, the bourgeois, ought in return to concede something to the 
government. And the bourgeois, though the true state of affairs is 
fairly clear to them, allow themselves to be fooled. This is the 
origin of the tacit agreement that forms the mute basis of all 
Reichstag and Prussian Chamber debates in Berlin. On the one 
hand, the government reforms the laws at a snail’s pace in the in- 
terest of the bourgeoisie, removes the feudal obstacles to industry 
as well as those which arose from the multiplicity of small states, 
establishes uniform coinage, weights and measures, freedom of 
occupation, etc., puts Germany’s labour power at the unrestricted 
disposal of capital by granting freedom of movement, and favours 
trade and swindling. On the other hand, the bourgeoisie leaves 
all actual political power in the hands of the government, votes 
taxes, loans and soldiers, and helps to frame all new reform laws in 
a way as to sustain the full force and effect of the old police 
power over undesirable elefnents. The bourgeoisie buys gradual 
social emancipation at the price of the immediate renunciation 
of political power. Naturally, the chief reason why such an 
agreement is acceptable to the bourgeoisie is not fear of the go- 
vernment but fear of the proletariat. 

However wretched a figure our bourgeoisie may cut in the 

political field, it cannot be denied that as far as industry and 
commerce are concerned it is at last doing its duty. The impetuous 
growth of industry and commerce referred to in the preface to the 
second edition’ has since proceeded with still greater vigour. What 
has taken place in this respect since 1869 in the Rhine- 
Westphalian industrial region is quite unprecedented for Germany 
and reminds one of the upsurge in the English manufacturing 
districts at the beginning of this century. The same thing holds 
true for Saxony and Upper Silesia, Berlin, Hanover and the 
seaports. At last we have world trade, a really big industry, a really 
modern bourgeoisie. But in return we have also had a real 
crash,*? and have likewise got a real, powerful proletariat. 

The future historian will attach much less importance in the 
history of Germany from 1869 to 1874 to the roar of battle at Spi- 
chern, Mars-la-Tour * and Sedan, and everything connected there- 
with, than to the unpretentious, quiet but constantly progressing 
development of the German proletariat. As early as 1870, the 
German workers were subjected to a severe test: the Bonapartist 
war provocation and its natural effect, the general national 
enthusiasm in Germany. The German socialist workers did not 
allow themselves to be confused for a single moment. They did 
not show any hint of national chauvinism. They kept their heads 
in the midst of the wildest jubilation over the victory, demanding 
“an equitable peace with the French republic and no annexa- 
tions”. Not even the state of siege could silence them. No battle 
glory, no talk of German “imperial magnificence”, produced any 
effect on them; liberation of the entire European proletariat was 
still their sole aim. One may say with assurance that in no other 
country have the workers hitherto been put to so hard a test and 
acquitted themselves so splendidly. 

The state of siege during the war was followed by trials for high 
treason, for lése majesté, for insulting officials, and by the ever 
increasing police chicanery of peacetime. The Volksstaat usually 
had three or four editors in prison at one time and the other 
papers too. Every party speaker of any distinction had to stand 
trial at least once a year and was almost always convicted. 
Deportations, confiscations and the breaking-up of meetings 
proceeded in rapid succession, thick as hail. All in vain. The place 
of every man arrested or deported was at once filled by another; 
for every broken-up meeting two new ones were called, and thus 
the arbitrary power of the police was worn down in one place 

after the other by endurance and strict conformity to the law. All 
this persecution had the opposite effect to that intended. Far from 
breaking the workers’ party or even bending it, it served only to 
enlist new recruits and consolidated the organisation. In their 
struggle with the authorities and also individual bourgeois, the 
workers showed themselves intellectually and morally superior, 
and proved, particularly in their conflicts with the so-called 
“providers of work”, the employers, that they, the workers, were 
now the educated class and the capitalists were the ignoramuses. 
Moreover, they conduct the fight for the most part with a sense of 
humour, which is the best proof of how sure they are of their 
cause and how conscious of their superiority. A struggle thus 
conducted on historically prepared soil must yield good results. 
The successes of the January elections stand unique in the history 
of the modern workers’ movement*’ and the astonishment they 
caused throughout Europe was fully justified. 

The German workers have two important advantages over those 
of the rest of Europe. First, they belong to the most theoretical 
people of Europe, and have retained the sense of theory which the 
so-called ‘‘educated” classes of Germany have almost completely 
lost. Without German philosophy, particularly that of Hegel, 
German scientific socialism—the only scientific socialism that has 
ever existed—would never have come into being. Without the 
workers’ sense of theory this scientific socialism would never have 
entered their flesh and blood as much as is the case. What an 
incalculable advantage this is may be seen,on the one hand, from 
the indifference to theory which is one of the main reasons why 
the English working-class movement crawls along so slowly in spite 
of the splendid organisation of the individual trades, and on the 
other hand, from the mischief and confusion wrought by 
Proudhonism in its original form among the French and Belgians, 
and in the form further caricatured by Bakunin among the 
Spaniards and Italians. 

The second advantage is that, chronologically speaking, the 
Germans were about the last to come into the workers’ movement. 
Just as German theoretical socialism will never forget that it rests 
on the shoulders of Saint-Simon, Fourier and Owen—three men 
who, in spite of all their fantastic notions and all their utopianism, 
stand among the most eminent thinkers of all time and whose 
genius anticipated innumerable things the correctness of which is 
now being scientifically proved by us—so the practical workers’ 
movement in Germany ought never to forget that it developed on 
the shoulders of the English and French movements, that it was 

able simply to utilise their dearly paid experience and could now 
avoid their mistakes, which were then mostly unavoidable. Where 
would we be now without the precedent of the English trade unions 
and French workers’ political struggles, and especially without the 
gigantic impulse of the Paris Commune? 

It must be said to the credit of the German workers that they 
have exploited the advantages of their situation with rare 
understanding. For the first time since a workers’ movement has 
existed, the struggle is being waged pursuant to its three 
sides—the theoretical, the political and the economico-practical 
(resistance to the capitalists)—in harmony and in its interconnec- 
tions, and in a systematic way. It is precisely in this, as it were con- 
centric, attack that the strength and invincibility of the German mo- 
vement lies. 

Due to this advantageous situation, on the one hand, and to the 
insular peculiarities of the English and the forcible suppression of 
the French movement, on the other, the German workers stand 
for the moment in the vanguard of the proletarian struggle. How 
long events will allow them to occupy this place of honour, cannot 
be foretold. But let us hope that as long as they occupy it they will 
fill it fittingly. This demands redoubled efforts in every field of 
struggle and agitation. In particular, it will be the duty of the 
leaders to gain an ever clearer insight into all theoretical questions, 
to free themselves more and more from the influence of 
traditional phrases inherited from the old world outlook, and 
constantly to keep in mind that socialism, since it has become a 
science, demands that it be pursued as a science, that is, that it be 
studied. The task will be to spread with increased zeal among the 
masses of workers the ever more lucid understanding thus acquired 
and to knit together ever more strongly the organisation both of 
the party and of the trade unions. Even if the votes cast for the 
Socialists in January have formed quite a decent army, they are 
sul far from constituting the majority of the German working 
class; encouraging as are the successes of propaganda among the 
rural population, infinitely more remains to be done in this field. 
Hence, we must make it a point not to slacken the struggle, and to 
wrest from the enemy one town, one constituency after the other; 
the main point, however, is to safeguard the true international 
spirit, which allows no patriotic chauvinism to arise and which 
readily welcomes every new advance of the proletarian movement, 
no matter from which nation it comes. If the German workers 
progress in this way, they will not be marching exactly at the head 
of the movement— it is not at all in the interest of this movement 

that the workers of any particular country should march at its 
head—but will occupy an honourable place in the battle line; they 
will stand armed for battle when either unexpectedly grave trials 
or momentous events demand of them added courage, added 
determination and energy. 

Frederick Engels 
London, July 1, 1874