[ Deutsche-Briisseler-Zeitung No. 79, October 3, 1847] 

Brussels, September 26. Today’s number of the Dfeutsche]- 
Br[usseler]-Z[ei]t{un]g contains an article by Heinzen? in which under 
the pretext of defending himself against a trivial accusation by the 
editors, he embarks on a long polemic against the Communists. 

The editors advise both sides to drop the polemic. In that case 
however they ought only to reproduce that part of Heinzen’s article 
in which Heinzen really defends himself against the accusation of 
having attacked the Communists first. Even if “Heinzen has no 
paper at his disposal”, that is no reason for placing one at his disposal 
for the publication of attacks which the editors of the paper 
themselves consider stupid. 

Incidentally, no greater service could have been rendered to the 
Communists than has been rendered through the publication of this 
article. Silliier and more narrow-minded criticisms than those 
Heinzen here makes of the Communists have never been made of 
any party. The article is the most dazzling vindication of the 
Communists. It proves that if they had not already attacked Heinzen, 
they would be obliged to do so at once. 

At the very outset Herr Heinzen presents himself as the 
representative of all the non-communist German radicals; his 
intention is to debate with the Communists as one party with 
another. He “is entitled to demand”, he announces with the greatest 
assurance what “must be expected of” the Communists, what “must 
be demanded of them”’, what the “duty of real Communists is”. He 

* Published as a statement in the Polemik column with a note by the editors 
entitled “Karl Heinzen und die Kommunisten”.— Ed. 

11--1826 

identifies his differences with the Communists in all respects with 
those “the German republicans and democrats” have with them and 
speaks of “we” in the name of these republicans. 

Who is Herr Heinzen, then, and what does he represent? 

Herr Heinzen is a former liberal, lower-ranking civil servant who 
in 1844 was still enthusiastic about legitimate progress and the 
wretched German Constitution, and who at best confessed in a 
confidential whisper that a republic might be desirable and possible, 
of course in the far distant future. Herr Heinzen was wrong however 
about the possibility of legal resistance in Prussia. The bad book he 
wrote on the bureaucracy* (even Jacob Venedey wrote a far better 
book about Prussia years ago”) compelled him to flee the country. 
Now the truth dawned on him. He declared legal resistance to be 
impossible, became a revolutionary and naturally a republican as 
well. In Switzerland he made the acquaintance of that savant sérieux 
Ruge, who taught him the little philosophy he has, consisting of a 
confused hotch-potch of Feuerbachian atheism and humanism, 
reminiscences of Hegel and rhetorical phrases from Stirner. Thus 
equipped, Herr Heinzen considered himself mature and inaugu- 
rated his revolutionary propaganda, leaning on Ruge to the right 
and Freiligrath to the left. 

We are most certainly not criticising Herr Heinzen for his 
transition from liberalism to bloodthirsty radicalism. But we do 
maintain that he has made this transition as a result of merely 
personal circumstances. As long as Herr Heinzen was able to put up 
legal resistance, he attacked all those who admitted the necessity of a 
revolution. Scarcely was legal resistance rendered impossible for him 
when he declared it to be impossible absolutely, without taking into 
account that for the present this resistance is still perfectly possible 
for the German bourgeoisie, which is constantly putting up a highly 
legal resistance. Scarcely had the way back been cut off for him when 
he declared the necessity of an immediate revolution. Instead of 
studying conditions in Germany, taking overall stock of them and 
deducing from this what progress, what development and what steps 
were necessary and possible, instead of obtaining for himself a clear 
picture of the complex situation of the individual classes in Germany 
with regard to each other and to the government and concluding 
from this what policy was to be followed, instead, in a word, of 
accommodating himself to the development of Germany, Herr 

* K. Heinzen, Die Preussische Bureaukratie.—Ed. 
p J. Venedey, Preussen und Preussenthum.— Ed. 
© Serious scholar.— Ed. 

The Communists and Karl Heinzen 293 

Heinzen quite unceremoniously demands that the development of 
Germany should accommodate itself to him. 

Herr Heinzen was a violent opponent of philosophy as long as it 
remained progressive. Scarcely had it become reactionary, scarcely 
had it become the refuge of all waverers, weaklings and literary 
hacks, when Herr Heinzen did himself the disservice of joining it. 
And worse still, fate would have it that Herr Ruge, who himself has 
been a mere proselyte all his life, has found his only proselyte in 
Herr Heinzen. Herr Heinzen is thus condemned to provide Herr 
Ruge with the consolation that at least one person believed he had 
penetrated his verbal edifices. 

For what end is Herr Heinzen actually working then? For the 
instant establishment of a German republic combining American 
and 1793 traditions with a few measures borrowed from the 
Communists, and looking very black, red and gold.'” As a result of 
its industrial lethargy, Germany occupies such a wretched position in 
Europe that it can never seize an initiative, never be the first to 
proclaim a great revolution, never establish a republic on its own 
account without France and England. Any German republic that is 
supposed to be created independently of the development of the 
civilised countries, any German revolution that is supposed to be 
carried out on its own and, as happens in Herr Heinzen’s case, leaves 
the real development of classes in Germany totally out of considera- 
tion, any such republic or revolution is nothing but black, red and 
gold day-dreaming. And in order to make this glorious German 
republic even more glorious, Herr Heinzen garnishes it with 
Feuerbachian, Rugified humanism, and proclaims it as the kingdom 
“of man” which is almost at hand. And the Germans are supposed to 
make something of all this topsy-turvy day-dreaming? 

But how does the great “agitator” Herr Heinzen conduct his 
propaganda? He declares the princes to be the chief authors of all 
poverty and distress. This assertion is not only ridiculous but 
exceedingly damaging. Herr Heinzen could not flatter the German 
princes, those impotent and feeble-minded puppets, more than by 
attributing to them fantastic, preternatural, daemonic omnipotence. 
If Herr Heinzen asserts that the princes can do so much evil, he is 
thereby also conceding them the power to perform as many good 
_ works. The conclusion this leads to is not the necessity of a revolution 
but the pious desire for a virtuous prince, for a good Emperor 
Joseph. In any case, the people know far better than Herr Heinzen 
who their oppressors are. Herr Heinzen will never transfer to the 
princes the hatred which the serf feels for the feudal lord and the 
worker for his employer. But of course Herr Heinzen is working in 

the interests of the landowners and capitalists when he puts the 
blame for the exploitation of the people by these two classes not on 
them but on the princes; and the exploitation by the landowners and 
capitalists is after all surely responsible for nineteen-twentieths of all 
the misery in Germany! 

Herr Heinzen calls for an immediate insurrection. He has leaflets 
printed? to this effect and attempts to distribute them in Germany. 
We would ask whether blindly lashing out with such senseless 
propaganda is not injurious in the highest degree to the interests of 
German democracy. We would ask whether experience has not 
proved how useless it is. Whether, at a time of far greater unrest, in 
the thirties, hundreds of thousands of such leaflets, pamphlets, etc., 
were not distributed in Germany and whether a single one of them 
had any success whatever. We would ask whether any person who is 
in his right mind at all can imagine that the people will pay any 
attention whatever to political sermonising and exhortations of this 
kind. We would ask whether Herr Heinzen has ever done anything 
else in his leaflets except exhort and sermonise. We would ask 
whether it is not positively ridiculous to trumpet calls for revolution 
out into the world in this way, without sense or understanding, 
without knowledge or consideration of circumstances. 

What is the task of a party press? To debate, first and foremost, 
to explain, to expound, to defend the party’s demands, to rebut and 
refute the claims and assertions of the opposing party. What is the 
task of the German democratic press? To demonstrate the necessity 
for democracy by the worthlessness of the present government, 
which by and large represents the nobility, by the inadequacy of the 
constitutional system that brings the bourgeoisie to the helm, by the 
impossibility of the people helping itself so long as it does not have 
political power. Its task is to reveal the oppression of the 
proletarians, small peasants and urban petty bourgeoisie, for in 
Germany these constitute the “people”, by the bureaucracy, the 
nobility and the bourgeoisie; how not only political but above all 
social oppression has come about, and by what means it can be 
eliminated; its task is to show that the conquest of political power 
by the proletarians, small peasants and urban petty bourgeoisie is the 
first condition for the application of these means. Its task is further 
to examine the extent to which a rapid realisation of democracy may 
be expected, what resources the party can command and what other 
parties it must ally itself with as long as it is too weak to act 
alone.—Well, and has Herr Heinzen done even one of these things? 

2 K. Heinzen, ““Teutsche Revolution. Gesammelte Flugschriften”.— Ed. 

The Communists and Karl Heinzen 295 

No. He has not put himself to so much trouble. He has revealed 
absolutely nothing to the people, in other words to the proletarians, 
small peasants and urban petty bourgeoisie. He has never examined 
the position of the classes and parties. He has done nothing but play 
variations on the one theme: Fight’em, fight’em, fight’em! 

And to whom does Herr Heinzen address his revolutionary 
sermonising? First and foremost to the small peasants, to that class 
which in our day and age is least of all capable of seizing a 
revolutionary initiative. For 600 years, all progressive movements 
have issued so exclusively from the towns that the independent 
democratic movements of country people (Wat Tyler, Jack Cade, 
the Jacquerie, the Peasants’ War'”*) were firstly always reactionary 
manifestations and were secondly always crushed. The industrial 
proletariat of the towns has become the vanguard of all modern 
democracy; the urban petty bourgeoisie and still more the peasants 
depend on its initiative completely. The French Revolution of 1789 
and the most recent history of England, France and the eastern states 
of America prove this. And Herr Heinzen hopes the peasants will 
fight now, in the nineteenth century? 

But Herr Heinzen also promises social reforms. Of course, the 
indifference of the people towards his appeals has gradually forced 
him to. And what kind of reforms are these? They are such as the 
Communists themselves suggest in preparation for the abolition of 
private property. The only point Herr Heinzen makes that deserves 
recognition he has borrowed from the Communists, the Communists 
whom he attacks so violently, and even that is reduced in his hands to 
utter nonsense and mere day-dreaming. All measures to restrict 
competition and the accumulation of capital in the hands of 
individuals, all restriction or suppression of the law of inheritance, all 
organisation of labour by the state, etc., all these measures are not 
only possible as revolutionary measures, but actually necessary. They 
are possible because the whole insurgent proletariat is behind them 
and maintains them by force of arms. They are possible, despite all 
the difficulties and disadvantages which are alleged against them by 
economists, because these very difficulties and disadvantages will 
compel the proletariat to go further and further until private 
property has been completely abolished, in order not to lose again 
what it has already won. They are possible as preparatory steps, 
temporary transitional stages towards the abolition of private 
property, but not in any other way. 

Herr Heinzen however wants all these measures as permanent, 
final measures. They are not to be a preparation for anything, they 
are to be definitive. They are for him not a means but an end. They 

are not designed for a revolutionary but for a peaceful, bourgeois 
condition. But this makes them impossible and at the same time 
reactionary. The economists of the bourgeoisie are quite right in 
respect of Herr Heinzen when they present these measures as 
reactionary compared with free competition. Free competition is the 
ultimate, highest and most developed form of existence of private 
property. All measures, therefore, which start from the basis of 
private property and which are nevertheless directed against free 
competition, are reactionary and tend to restore more primitive 
stages in the development of property, and for that reason they must 
finally be defeated once more by competition and result in the 
restoration of the present situation. These objections the bourgeoisie 
raises, which lose all their force as soon as one regards the above 
social reforms as pure mesures de salut public, as revolutionary and 
transitory measures, these objections are devastating as far as Herr 
Heinzen’s peasant-socialist black, red and gold republic is concerned. 

Herr Heinzen of course imagines that property relations, the law 
of inheritance, etc., can at will be altered and trimmed to shape. Herr 
Heinzen—one of the most ignorant men of this century—may, of 
course, not know that the property relations of any given era are the 
necessary result of the mode of production and exchange of that era. 
Herr Heinzen may not know that one cannot transform large-scale 
landownership into small-scale without the whole pattern of 
agriculture being transformed, and that otherwise large-scale 
landownership will very rapidly re-assert itself. Herr Heinzen may 
not know what a close relationship exists between today’s large-scale 
industry, the concentration of capital and the creation of the 
proletariat. Herr Heinzen may not know that a country as 
industrially dependent and subservient as Germany can never 
presume to undertake on its own account a transformation of its 
property relations other than one that is in the interests of the 
bourgeoisie and of free competition. 

In short: with the Communists these measures have sense and 
reason because they are not conceived as arbitrary measures but as 
consequences which will necessarily and of themselves ensue from 
the development of industry, agriculture, trade and communica- 
tions, from the development of the class struggle between 
bourgeoisie and proletariat which is dependent on these; which will 
ensue not as definitive measures but as transitory ones, mesures de 
salut public arising from the transitory struggle between the classes 
itself. 

With Herr Heinzen, they have neither sense nor reason, because 
they take the form of quite arbitrarily conceived, obtusely bourgeois 

The Communists and Karl Heinzen 297 

visions of putting the world to rights; because there is no mention of 
a connection between these measures and historical development; 
because Herr Heinzen is not in the least concerned about the 
material feasibility of his proposals; because it is not his aim to 
formulate industrial necessities but on the contrary to overturn them 
by decree. 

The same Herr Heinzen who is only able to adopt the demands of 
the Communists after he has so cruelly confused them and 
transformed them into pure fantasies, that same Herr Heinzen 
criticises the Communists for “confusing the minds of the unedu- 
cated”, for “chasing fantasies” and for “failing to keep their feet on 
the ground (!) of reality”! 

There we have Herr Heinzen in all his activity as an agitator, and 
we make no bones about our opinion that it brings nothing but harm 
and discredit upon the whole German radical party. A party writer 
requires quite different qualities from those possessed by Herr 
Heinzen, who, as we said, is one of the most ignorant men of our 
century. Herr Heinzen may have the best will in the world, he may be 
the most steadfast man in his convictions in the whole of Europe. We 
also know that he is personally a man of honour and has courage and 
endurance. But all that does not make him a party writer. To be that, 
one requires more than convictions, good will and a stentorian voice, 
to be that, one requires a little more intelligence, a little more 
lucidity, a better style and more knowledge than Herr Heinzen 
possesses and, as long experience has proved, than he is capable of 
acquiring. 

Herr Heinzen’s flight has faced him with the necessity of becoming 
a party writer nevertheless. He was compelled to try to form a party 
of his own among the radicals. Thus he got into a situation he was 
not equal to, in which through his unsuccessful efforts to meet the 
demands of this situation he only makes himself ridiculous. He 
would make the German radicals look equally ridiculous if they 
left him the pretence that he was representing them, that he was 
making himself ridiculous in their name. 

But Herr Heinzen does not represent the German radicals. They 
have quite other representatives, e.g., Jacoby and others. Herr 
Heinzen represents no one and is recognised by no one as their 
representative, apart perhaps from some few German bourgeois 
who sent him money for the purposes of agitation. But we are 
mistaken: one class in Germany recognises him as its representative, 
adores him and roars its head off for him, outshouts whole tables 
of drinkers in the taverns for him (just as, according to Herr 
Heinzen, the Communists “outshouted the whole literary opposi- 

tion”). This class is the numerous, enlightened, noble-minded and 
influential class of commis-voyageurs. 

And this Herr Heinzen demands that the Communists should 
recognise him as representative of the radical bourgeoisie and debate 
with him in that capacity? 

For the moment, these are reasons enough to justify the polemic 
the Communists are conducting against Herr Heinzen. In the next 
issue we shall investigate the criticisms which Herr Heinzen makes of 
the Communists in No. 77 of the paper. 

If we were not completely convinced that Herr Heinzen 1s utterly 
incompetent as a party writer, we would advise him to subject Marx’s 
Misere de la Philosophie to close study. But as things are, in response to 
his advice to us to read Frobel’s Neue Politik,» we can only give him 
the alternative advice to maintain absolute silence and wait quietly 
until “the fighting starts”. We are convinced that Herr Heinzen will 
prove as good a batallion commander as he is a bad writer. 

So that Herr Heinzen cannot complain about anonymous attacks, 
we are signing this article. 

F. Engels 

SECOND ARTICLE 
[ Deutsche-Briisseler-Zeitung No. 80, October 7, 1847] 

The Communists—this we established in the first article—are 
attacking Heinzen not because he is no Communist, but because 
he is a bad democratic party writer. They are attacking him not in 
their capacity as Communists but in their capacity as democrats. It is 
purely coincidental that it is precisely the Communists who have 
opened the polemic against him; even if there were no Communists 
at all in the world, the democrats would still have to take the field 
against Heinzen. In this whole controversy it is only a question of: 
1. whether Herr Heinzen as a party writer and agitator is capable of 
serving German democracy, which we deny; 2. whether Herr 
Heinzen’s manner of agitation is a correct one, whether it is merely 
tolerable, which we likewise deny. It is therefore a question neither 
of communism nor of democracy, but just of Herr Heinzen’s person 
and his personal eccentricities. 

2 Commercial travellers.—Ed. 

b J. Frobel, “System der socialen Politik”, zweite Auflage der Neuen Politik, 
Th. I-II (the first edition entitled Neue Politik appeared under the pen-name 
“Junius’”’).— Ed. 

The Communists and Karl Heinzen 299 

Far from starting futile quarrels with the democrats, in the present 
circumstances, the Communists for the time being rather take the 
field as democrats themselves in all practical party matters. In all 
civilised countries, democracy has as its necessary consequence the 
political rule of the proletariat, and the political rule of the 
proletariat is the first condition for all communist measures. As long 
as democracy has not been achieved, thus long do Communists and 
democrats fight side by side, thus long are the interests of the 
democrats at the same time those of the Communists. Until that time, 
the differences between the two parties are of a purely theoretical 
nature and can perfectly well be debated on a theoretical level 
without common action being thereby in any way prejudiced. In- 
deed, understandings will be possible concerning many measures 
which are to be carried out in the interests of the previously op- 
pressed classes immediately after democracy has been achieved, 
e.g. the running of large-scale industry and the railways by the 
state, the education of all children at state expense, etc. 

Now to Herr Heinzen. 

Herr Heinzen declares the Communists had begun a quarrel with 
him, not he with them. The well-known argument of the street- 
porter, then, which we will readily concede to him. He calls his 
conflict with the Communists “the absurd split which the Commu- 
nists have provoked in the camp of the German radicals”. He says 
that as long as three years ago he had been concerned to prevent the 
approaching split as far as his powers and circumstances might 
permit. These fruitless exertions were followed, he says, by attacks 
on him by the Communists. 

Herr Heinzen, as everyone perfectly well knows, was not yet in the 
radical camp three years ago. At that time Herr Heinzen was 
progressive-within-the-law and liberal. A split with him was there- 
fore by no means a split in the camp of the radicals. 

Herr Heinzen met some Communists here in Brussels at the 
beginning of 1845. Far from attacking Herr Heinzen for his 
ostensible political radicalism, they rather took the greatest trouble to 
bring the then liberal Herr Heinzen over to just this radicalism. But 
in vain. Herr Heinzen only became a democrat in Switzerland. 

“I later became more and more convinced (!) of the need for a 
vigorous struggle against the Communists”—in other words, of the 
need for an absurd split in the radical camp! We ask the German 
democrats whether someone who contradicts himself so absurdly is 
fitted to be a party writer? 

But who are the Communists by whom Herr Heinzen claims he 
was attacked? The above innuendoes and particularly the ensuing 

reproaches against the Communists show who it was clearly. The 
Communists, we read, 

‘“‘were outshouting the whole camp of the literary opposition, confusing the minds 
of the uneducated, decrying even the most radical men in the most uninhibited 
manner, ... they were intent on paralysing the political struggle as far as possible, ... 
indeed, they were finally positively allying themselves ... even with reaction. Further- 
more they often descended, obviously as a result of their doctrine, to base and false in- 
triguesin practical life...” 

Out of the fog and vagueness of these criticisms looms an easily 
recognisable figure: that of the literary hack, Herr Karl Grun. Three 
years ago Herr Grün had some personal dealings with Herr 
Heinzen, whereupon Herr Grün attacked Herr Heinzen in the 
Trier’sche Zeitung, Herr Grün attempted to outshout the whole camp 
of the literary opposition, Herr Grin strove to paralyse the political 
struggle as far'as possible, etc. 

But since when has Herr Grin been a representative of 
communism? If he thrust himself on the Communists three years 
ago, he has never been recognised as a Communist, he has never 
openly declared himself to be a Communist, and more than a year 
ago he thought it proper to inveigh against the Communists. 

Moreover, even at that time, for Herr Heinzen’s benefit, Marx 
repudiated Herr Grün, just as he later publicly showed him up in his 
true colours at the first opportunity.? 

Concerning Herr Heinzen’s final “base and false” insinuation 
about the Communists, one incident which occurred between Herr 
Grun and Herr Heinzen, and nothing more, lies behind this. This 
incident concerns the two gentlemen in question and not the 
Communists at all. We are not even so exactly acquainted with this 
incident as to be able to pass judgment on it. But let us assume Herr 
Heinzen is in the right. If he then, after Marx and other Communists 
have repudiated his adversary, after it has been shown beyond all 
doubt that his adversary was never a Communist, if Herr Heinzen 
then still presents the incident as a necessary consequence of 
communist doctrine, it is monstrously perfidious of him. 

And furthermore, if in his above reproaches Herr Heinzen has in 
mind persons other than Herr Grün, he can only mean those true 
socialists whose admittedly reactionary theories have long ago been 
repudiated by the Communists. All members of this now completely 

* The reference is apparently to the “Declaration Against Karl Grün” (see this vol- 
ume, pp. 72-74) and Chapter IV of Volume II of The German Ideology published in Au- 
gust-September 1847 in the journal Das Westphdlische Dampfboot as an article under the 
title ‘“Kar] Grün: Die Soziale Bewegung in Frankreich und Belgien (Darmstadt, 1845) or the 
Historiography of True Socialism” .— Ed. 

The Communists and Karl Heinzen 301 

dissolved movement who are capable of learning anything have come 
over to the Communists and are now themselves attacking true 
socialism wherever it still shows itself. Herr Heinzen is thus again 
speaking with his customary crass ignorance when he once more 
disinters these superannuated visions in order to lay them at the 
Communists’ door. Whilst Herr Heinzen here reproaches the true 
socialists, whom he confuses with the Communists, he subsequently 
makes the same nonsensical criticisms of the Communists as the true 
socialists did. He thus has not even the right to attack the true 
socialists, he belongs, in one respect, to them himself. And whilst the 
Communists were writing sharp attacks on these socialists, the same 
Herr Heinzen was sitting in Zurich being initiated by Herr Ruge into 
those fragments of true socialism which had found a niche for 
themselves in the latter’s confused brain. Herr Ruge had indeed 
found a pupil worthy of him! 

But what of the real Communists then? Herr Heinzen speaks of 
honourable exceptions and talented men, of whom he foresees that 
they will reject communist solidarity (!). The Communists have 
already rejected solidarity with the writings and actions of the true 
socialists. Of all the above reproaches, not a single one applies to the 
Communists, unless it be the conclusion of the whole passage, which 
reads as follows: 

“The Communists ... in the arrogance of their imagined superiority laughed to 
scorn everything which is indispensable for forming the basis of an association of 
honourable people.” 

Herr Heinzen appears, to be alluding here to the fact that 
Communists have made fun of his sternly moral demeanour and 
mocked all those sacred and sublime ideas, virtue, justice, morality, 
etc., which Herr Heinzen imagines form the basis of all society. We 
accept this reproach. The Communists will not allow the moral 
indignation of that. honourable man Herr Heinzen to prevent them 
from mocking these eternal verities. The Communists, moreover, 
maintain that these eternal verities are by no means the basis, but on 
the contrary the product, of the society in which they feature. 

If, incidentally, Herr Heinzen foresaw that the Communists would 
reject solidarity with those people he takes it into his head to 
associate with them—what is the point of all his absurd reproaches 
and lying insinuations? If Herr Heinzen only knows the Com- 
munists from hearsay, as almost appears to be the case, if he 
knows so little who they are that he demands they should designate 
themselves more closely, and so to speak introduce themselves to him, 
what brazenness is this he exhibits in polemicising against them? 

“A designation of those ... who ... actually represent communism or manifest it in 
its pure form would ... probably have to exclude completely the vast majority of those 
who base themselves upon communism and are used for it, and it would hardly be the 
people from the Trier’sche Zeitung alone who would protest against the assertion of 
such a claim.” 

And a few lines later: 

“Those who are really Communists now must be allowed the consistency and honesty” 
(what a decent philistine speaks here!) ‘of coming forward and openly professing 
their doctrine and declaring their dissociation from those who are not Communists... 
They are under the moral obligation” (how typical of the philistine these expressions 
are) “not to maintain unscrupulously (!) the confusion which is created in the minds of a 
thousand suffering, uneducated minds by the impossibility (!!), dreamt of or falsely 
advertised as a possibility, of finding a way, based on real conditions, to implement 
that doctrine (!). It is the duty” (the philistine again) “of the real Communists either 
completely to clarify things for all their unenlightened adherents and to lead them toa 
definite goal, or else to detach themselves from them and not to use them.” 

If Herr Ruge had produced these last three periods, he could have 
been well pleased. Entirely matching the philistine demands is the 
philistine confusion of thought, which is concerned only with the 
matter and not with the form and for that very reason says the exact 
opposite of what it wants to say. Herr Heinzen demands that the real 
Communists should detach themselves from the merely seeming 
ones. They should put an end to the confusion which (that is what he 
wants to say) arises from the mixing up of two different trends. But as 
soon as the two words “Communists” and “confusion” collide in his 
mind, confusion arises there too. Herr Heinzen loses the thread; his 
constantly reiterated formula, that the Communists in general are 
confusing the minds of the uneducated, trips him up, he forgets the 
real Communists and the unreal Communists, he stumbles with 
farcical clumsiness over a host of impossibilities dreamt of or falsely 
advertised as possibilities, and finally falls flat on his face on the solid 
ground of real conditions, where he regains his faculty of reflection. 
Now he is reminded that he meant to talk about something quite 
different, that it was not a question of whether this or that was 
possible. He returns to his theme, but is still so dazed that he does 
not even cross out that magnificent sentence in which he executed 
the somersault just described. 

So much for the style. Regarding the matter, we repeat that, 
honest German that he is, Herr Heinzen comes too late with his 
demands, and that the Communists repudiated those true socialists 
long ago. But then we see here once again that the application 
of sly insinuations is by no means irreconcilable with the character of 
a decent philistine. For Herr Heinzen gives it clearly enough to be 

| The Communists and Karl Heinzen 303 

understood that the communist writers are only using the commun- 
ist workers. He says in almost as many words that if these writers 
were to come forward openly with their intentions, the vast majority 
of those who are being used for communism would be excluded 
completely. He regards the communist writers as prophets, priests or 
preachers who possess a secret wisdom of their own but deny it to the 
uneducated in order to keep them on leading-strings. All his decent 
philistine demands that things be clarified for the unenlightened and 
that these persons must not be used, obviously proceed from the 
assumption that the literary representatives of communism have an 
interest in keeping the workers in the dark, as though they were. 
merely using them, just as the Illuminati'?” wished to use the 
common people in the last century. This insipid idea also causes 
Herr Heinzen to burst forth with always inopportune talk about 
confusion in the minds of the uneducated, and compels him, as a 
penalty for not speaking his mind plainly, to perform stylistic 
somersaults. 

We merely take note of these insinuations, we do not take issue 
with them. We leave it to the communist workers to pass judgment 
on them themselves. 

At last, after all these preliminaries, diversions, appeals, insinua- 
tions and somersaults by Herr Heinzen, we come to his theoretical 
attacks on and reflections about the Communists. 

Herr Heinzen 

“discerns the core of the communist doctrine simply in ... the abolition of private 

property (including that earned through labour) and in the principle of the communal 
utilisation of the earth’s riches which follows inescapably from that abolition.” 

Herr Heinzen imagines communism is a certain doctrine which 
proceeds from a definite theoretical principle as its core and draws 
further conclusions from that. Herr Heinzen is very much mistaken. 
Communism is not a doctrine but a movement; it proceeds not from 
principles but from facts. The Communists do not base themselves on 
this or that philosophy as their point of departure but on the whole 
course of previous history and specifically its actual results in the 
civilised countries at the present time. Communism has followed 
from large-scale industry and its consequences, from the establish- 
ment of the world market, of the concomitant uninhibited competi- 
tion, from the ever more violent and more universal trade crises, 
which have already become full-fledged crises of the world market, 
from the creation of the proletariat and the concentration of capital, 
from the ensuing class struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie. 
Communism, insofar as it is a theory, is the theoretical expression of 

the position of the proletariat in this struggle and the theoretical 
summation of the conditions for the liberation of the proletariat. 

Herr Heinzen will now no doubt realise that in assessing 
communism he has to do rather more than discern its core simply in 
the abolition of private property; that he would do better to 
undertake certain studies in political economy than to gabble wildly 
about the abolition of private property; that he cannot know the first 
thing about the consequences of the abolition of private property if he 
does not also know its conditions. 

However, in this respect, Herr Heinzen labours under such gross 
ignorance that he even says “the communal utilisation of the earth’s 
riches” (another fine expression) is the consequence of the abolition of 
private property. Precisely the contrary is the case. Because 
large- -scale industry, the development of machinery, communica- 
tions and world trade are assuming such gigantic proportions that 
their exploitation by individual capitalists is becoming daily more 
impossible; because the mounting crises of the world market are the 
most striking proof of this; because the productive forces and the 
means of exchange which characterise the present mode of 
production and exchange are daily becoming increasingly more than 
individual exchange and private property can manage; because, in a 
word, the moment is approaching when communal management of 
industry, of agriculture and of exchange will become a material 
necessity for industry, agriculture and exchange themselves—for 
this reason private property will be abolished. 

So when Herr Heinzen forcibly separates the abolition of private 
property, which is of course the condition for the liberation of the 
proletariat, from the conditions that attach to it, when he considers it 
quite out of all connection with the real world simply as an 
ivory-tower fantasy, it becomes a pure cliché about which he can only 
talk platitudinous nonsense. This he does as follows: 

“By its above-mentioned casting-off of all private property..., communism 
necessarily also abolishes individual existence.” (So Herr Heinzen is reproaching us for 
wanting to turn people into Siamese twins.) “The consequence of this is once more ... 
the incorporation of each individual into a perhaps (!!) communally organised 
barracks ... economy.” (Would the reader kindly note that this is avowedly only the 
consequence of Herr Heinzen’s own absurd remarks about individual existence.) “By 
these means communism destroys ... individuality ... independence ... freedom.” (The 
same old twaddle as we had from the true socialists and the bourgeoisie. As though 
there was any individuality to be destroyed in the individuals whom the division of 
labour has today turned against their will into cobblers, factory workers, bourgeois, 
lawyers, peasants, in other words, into slaves of a particular form of labour and of the 
mores, way of life, prejudices and blinkered attitudes, etc., that go with that form of 

labour!) “It sacrifices the individual person with its necessary attribute or basis” (that 
“or? is marvellous) “of earned private property to the ‘phantom of the community or 

The Communists and Karl Heinzen 305 

739 

society’” (is Stirner here as well?), “whereas the community cannot and should not” 
(should not!!) “be the aim but only the means for each individual person.” 

Herr Heinzen attaches particular importance to earned private 
property and in so doing once again proves his crass unfamiliarity 
with the matter on which he is speaking. Herr Heinzen’s philistine 
justice, which allows to each man what he has earned, is unfortunate- 
ly frustrated by large-scale industry. As long as large-scale industry is 
not so far advanced that it frees itself completely from the fetters of 
private property, thus long does it permit no other distribution of its 
products than that at present occurring, thus long will the capitalist 
pocket his profit and the worker increasingly know by practice just 
what a minimum wage is. M. Proudhon attempted to develop a 
system for earned property which would relate it to existing 
conditions, and, we all know, he failed spectacularly. Herr Heinzen, 
it is true, will never risk a similar experiment, for in order to do so 
he would need to study, and he will not do that. But let the example 
of M. Proudhon teach him to expose his earned property less to 
public scrutiny. 

And if Herr Heinzen reproaches the Communists for chasing 
fantasies and failing to keep their feet on the ground of reality—to 
whom does this reproach properly apply? 

Herr Heinzen goes on to say a number of other things which we 
need not enter into. We merely observe that his sentences get worse 
and worse the further he proceeds. The clumsiness of his language, 
which can never find the right word, would of itself suffice to 
discredit any party which acknowledged him as its literary represen- 
tative. The solidity of his conviction constantly makes him say 
something quite different from what he intends to say. Thus each of 
his sentences contains a twofold nonsense: firstly the nonsense he 
intends to say, and secondly the one he doesn’t intend to say but 
nevertheless says. We gave an example of it above. It only remains 
for us to observe that Herr Heinzen repeats his old superstition 
about the power of the princes when he says that the power which 
must be overthrown and which is none other than the power of the 
State, is and always has been the progenitor and’ preserver of all 
injustice, and that his aim is to establish a State really based on justice (!) 
and within this fantasy structure 

“to undertake all those social reforms which have emerged in the course of events 
in general (!), as correct (!) in theory and possible (!) in practice”!!! 

His intentions are as good as his style is bad, and that is the fate of 
the well-meaning in this bad world. 

From seduction by the Zeitgeist, 
Nature-nurtured sansculotte, 
Dancing badly, but yet bearing 
Good intentions in a bosom rough; 

Void of talent, yet a character.” 

Our articles will fill Herr Heinzen with all the righteous indigna- 
tion of an outraged honest philistine, but for all that he is not going 
to give up either his style of writing or his discreditable and 
ineffectual manner of agitation. We found his threat to string us 
up on the nearest lamp-post when the day for action and decision 
comes most entertaining. 

In short: the Communists must co-operate with the German 
radicals and desire to do so. But they reserve the right to attack any 

writer who discredits the entire party. This, and no other, was our 
intention in attacking Heinzen. 

Brussels, October 3, 1847 F. Engels 

N. B. We have just received a pamphlet written by a worker: Der 
Heinzen’sche Staat, eine Kritik von Stephan, Bern, Ratzer. If Herr 
Heinzen wrote half so well as this worker, he might be well satisfied. 
From this pamphlet Herr Heinzen can see clearly enough, amongst 
other things, why the workers want nothing to do with his peasant 
republic. We also observe that this pamphlet is the first written by a 
worker which does not adopt a moral attitude but attempts to trace 
the political struggles of the present back to the struggle of the 
various classes of society with one another. 

1847 

Zeitung Nos. 79 and 80, October 3 and 7, 
1847