[Rheinische Zeitung No. 343, December 9, 1842] 

London, November 30. Is a revolution in England possible or 
even probable? This is the question on which the future of 
England depends. Put it to an Englishman and he will give you a 
thousand excellent reasons to prove that there can be no question 
at all of a revolution. He will tell you that at the moment certainly 
England is in a critical situation, but thanks to her wealth, her 
industry and her institutions, she has the ways and means to 
extricate herself without violent upheavals, that her constitution is 
sufficiently flexible to withstand the heaviest blows caused by the 
struggle over principles and can, without danger to its founda- 
tions, submit to all the changes forced on it by circumstances. He 
will tell you that even the lowest class of the nation is well aware 
that it only stands to lose by a revolution, since every disturbance 
of the public order can only result in a slow-down in business and 
hence general unemployment and starvation. In short, he will 
offer you so many clear and convincing reasons that finally you 
will believe things are really not so very bad in England, and that 
people on the Continent are indulging in all kinds of fantasies 
about the situation of this state, which will burst like soap-bubbles 
in face of obvious reality and a closer acquaintance with the facts. 
And this is the only possible opinion if one adopts the national 
English standpoint of the most immediate practice, of material 
interests, i. e., if one ignores the motivating idea, forgets the basis 
because of the surface appearance, and fails to see the wood for 
the trees. There is one thing that is self-evident in Germany, but 
which the obstinate Briton cannot be made to understand, namely, 
that the so-called material interests can never operate in history as 

The Internal Crises 371 

independent, guiding aims, but always, consciously or unconscious- 
ly, serve a principle which controls the threads of historical 
progress. It is therefore impossible that a state like England, which 
by virtue of its political exclusiveness and self-sufficiency has 
finally come to lag some centuries behind the Continent, a state 
which sees only arbitrary rule in freedom and is up to the neck in 
the Middle Ages, that such a state should not eventually come into 
conflict with the intellectual progress that has been made in the 
meantime. Or is that not the picture of the political situation in 
England? Is there any other country in the world where feudalism 
retains such enduring power and where it remains immune from 
attack not only in actual fact, but also in public opinion? Is the 
much-vaunted English freedom anything but the purely formal 
right to act or not to act, as one sees fit, within the existing legal 
limits?. And what laws they are! A chaos of confused, mutually 
contradictory regulations, which have reduced jurisprudence to 
pure sophistry, which are never observed by courts of law since 
they are not in accord with our times; regulations which allow 
an honest man to be branded as a criminal for the most in- 
nocent behaviour, as long as public opinion and its sense of 
justice sanctioned it. Is not the House of Commons a corporation 
alien to the people, elected by means of wholesale bribery? 
Does not Parliament continually trample underfoot the will of 
the people? Has public opinion on general questions the slightest 
influence on the government? Is not its power restricted mere- 
ly to isolated cases, to control over the courts of law and admin- 
istration? These are all things which even the most obdurate 
Englishman cannot totally deny, and can such‘a state of things 
persist? ; oF 

But let us leave aside questions of principle. In England, at any 
rate among the parties which are now contending for power, 
among the Whigs and Tories, people know nothing of struggles 
over principles and are concerned only with conflicts of material 
interests. It is only fair, therefore, to do justice to this aspect as 
well. England is by nature a poor country which, apart from her 
geographical position, her iron and coal mines and some lush 
pasture-land, has no fertility or other natural riches. She is, 
therefore, entirely dependent on trade, shipping and industry, 
and through them she has succeeded in rising to her present 
heights. By the very nature of things, however, a country which 
has adopted this course can remain at the heights it has reached 
only by constantly increasing industrial output; any halt here 
would be a step backward. 

Further, a natural consequence of the premises of the industrial 
state is that, in order to protect the source of its wealth, it has to 
keep out the industrial products of other countries by means of 
prohibitive import duties. But since the home industry raises the 
prices of its products in step with the import duties on foreign 
products, this makes it necessary also to increase import duties 
constantly, in order that foreign competition shall continue to be 
eliminated, in accordance with the accepted principle. Hence the 
result would be a two-sided process going on to infinity, and this 
alone reveals the contradiction inherent in the concept of the 
industrial state. But we do not need these philosophical categories 
to show the contradictions in which England is enmeshed. Other 
people besides the English industrialists have something to say on 
the question of the two kinds of increase — production and import 
duties —that we have just considered. In the first place, there are 
the foreign countries, which have their own industry and do not 
need to turn themselves into an outlet for English products; and 
then there are the English consumers, who refuse to reconcile 
themselves to this endless increase in import duties. That is 
. precisely how matters stand as regards the development of the 
industrial state in England. Foreign countries do not want English 
products since they themselves produce what they need, while 
English consumers unanimously demand the abolition of the 
protective tariffs. From the above, it is clear that England is caught 
in a twofold dilemma which the industrial state as such is 
incapable of solving; this is also confirmed by direct observation of 
the existing state of affairs. 

First of all, on the question of import duties, it is admitted even 
in England that the lower grades of almost all types of goods are 
produced better and more cheaply by German and French 
factories; the same holds good for numerous other commodities 
where the English lag behind the Continent. If the system of 
protective tariffs were abolished, England would immediately be 
flooded with them, and English industry would thereby be dealt a 
fatal blow. On the other hand, the export of machinery from 
England is freely permitted at present, and since England so far 
has no rivals in the manufacture of machinery, the Continent, with 
the help of English machines, is becoming increasingly capable of 
competing against England. Further, the system of protective 
tariffs has undermined England’s state revenue, and for this 
reason alone the tariffs must be abolished. Is there any way out of 
this situation for the industrial state? 

The Internal Crises 373 

[Rheinische Zeitung No. 344, December 10, 1842] 

As regards the market for English products, Germany and 
France have stated sufficiently clearly that they are no longer 
ready to sacrifice their own industry to please England. German 
industry especially has in any case made such progress that it has 
nothing to fear from English industry. The continental market is 
lost for England. Only America and her own colonies remain for 
her, and only in the latter is she safeguarded against foreign 
competition by her navigation laws.'*’ But the colonies are far 
from being large enough to consume all the products of England’s 
immense industry, while everywhere else English industry is being 
increasingly ousted by the German and French. The blame for 
this, of course, does not lie with English industry, but with the 
system of protective tariffs, which has made the prices of all prime 
necessities, and with them wages, disproportionately high. But 
these wages also make the prices of English products extremely 
high compared with those of continental industry. Thus, England 
cannot escape the necessity of restricting her industry. But this is 
as little realisable as the transition from the system of protective 
tariffs to free trade. For although industry makes a country rich, it 
also creates a class of unpropertied, absolutely poor people, a class 
which lives from hand to mouth, which multiplies rapidly, and 
which cannot afterwards be abolished, because it can never acquire 
stable possession of property. And a third, almost a half, of all 
English people belong to this class. The slightest stagnation in 
trade deprives a considerable part of this class of their bread, a 
large-scale trade crisis leaves the whole class without bread. When 
such a situation occurs, what is there left for these people to do 
but to revolt? By its numbers, this class has become the most 
powerful in England, and woe betide the wealthy eee 
when it becomes conscious of this fact. 

So far it is not conscious of the fact. The English proletarian is 
only just becoming aware of his power, and the fruits of this 
awareness were the disturbances of last summer.’** The nature of 
these disturbances was quite misunderstood on the Continent. At 
any rate, people wondered whether the matter might not take a 
serious turn. But there was no question of that for anyone who 
saw the events on the spot. In the first place, the whole thing was 
based on an illusion; because a few factory owners wanted to 
reduce wages, all the workers in the cotton, coal and iron areas 
thought that their position was endangered, which was not the 
case at all. Moreover, the whole affair was unprepared, unorgan- 

ised and. without leadership. The strikers had no definite aim, still 
less were they united on the nature and method of the action to 
be taken. Hence, at the slightest resistance on the part of the 
authorities they became irresolute and unable to overcome their 
respect for the law. When the Chartists took over the leadership of 
the movement and proclaimed the People’s Charter* to the ass¢m- 
bled crowds, it was already too late. The only guiding idea 
vaguely present in the minds of the workers, and of the Chartists 
as well, with whom it had, in effect, originated, was that of 
revolution by legal means—in itself a contradiction, a practical 
impossibility—in their efforts to achieve which they failed. The 
very first measure jointly undertaken by all—stopping the fac- 
tories—was forcible and illegal. In view of the inconsistent 
character of the whole undertaking, it would have been sup- 
pressed at the very outset if the administration, for whom it came as a 
complete surprise, had not been equally irresolute and resource- 
less. Nevertheless, insignificant military and police forces sufficed 
to hold the people in check. In Manchester one saw thousands of 
workers trapped in the squares by four or five dragoons, each of 
whom blocked one of the exits. The “legal revolution” had 
paralysed everything. Thus the whole thing fizzled out; every 
worker returned to work as soon as his savings were used up and 
he had no more to eat. However, the dispossessed have gained 
something useful from these events: the realisation that a revolu- 
tion by peaceful means is impossible and that only a forcible 
abolition of the existing unnatural conditions, a radical overthrow 
of the nobility and industrial aristocracy, can improve the material 
position of the proletarians. They are still held back from this 
violent revolution by the Englishman's inherent respect for the 
law; but in view of England’s position described above there 
cannot fail to be a general lack of food among the workers before 
long, and then fear of death from starvation will be stronger than 
fear of the law. This revolution is inevitable for England, but as in 
everything that happens there, it will be interests and not 
principles that will begin and carry through the revolution; 
principles can develop only from interests, that is to say, the 
revolution will be social, not political. 

Marked with the sign *x*