A Bourgeois Document

Karl Marx / Georg Weerth
* Cologne, 4 January.
No. 187, 5 January 1849
Neue Rheinische Zeitung.

Public charity, as is well known, has assumed the noblest and most magnanimous forms in England, where the rule of the bourgeoisie is most highly developed. The English workhouses—public institutions in which the superfluous worker population vegetates at the expense of bourgeois society—combine in a truly ingenious fashion charity with the vengeance which the bourgeoisie wreaks upon the wretches who are forced to appeal to its charity. The poor devils are not only fed the most miserable, paltry means of subsistence, barely sufficient for physical reproduction; their activity, too, is restricted to a repulsive, mind- and body-numbing, unproductive semblance of labour—e.g., exertion at the treadmills. In order that the unfortunate ones may finally grasp the full magnitude of their crime, a crime consisting in the fact that, instead of being, as in the ordinary course of life, exploitable and profit-yielding matter for the bourgeoisie, they have rather been transformed into costing matter for those born to enjoy the usufruct of them, much as casks of spirits left lying in the warehouse turn into costing matter for the spirit dealer; in order that they may learn to feel the full magnitude of this crime, everything is withdrawn from them that is left to the commonest criminal—intercourse with wife and child, conversation, speech—everything. And even this “cruel charity” of the English bourgeoisie rests by no means on sentimental grounds, but on very practical, entirely calculable ones. On the one hand, the bourgeois order and commercial activity could suffer in a disturbing manner were the paupers of the whole of Great Britain suddenly flung onto the streets. On the other hand, English industry moves now in periods of feverish overproduction, when the demand for hands can scarcely be met and the hands must yet be procured as cheaply as possible; now in periods of commercial slackening, when production far outstrips consumption and barely half the army of workers can be usefully employed at half pay. What more ingenious means than the workhouses to hold a reserve army ready for the favourable periods, and at the same time, during the unfavourable periods of trade, to breed them in these godly institutions into a will-less, resistance-less, claim-less, and need-less machine?

The Prussian bourgeoisie distinguishes itself advantageously from the English by countering the British political arrogance, reminiscent of pagan Roman ways, with the most submissive extinction in Christian de- and woe before throne, altar, army, bureaucracy, and feudalism; by substituting commercial energy, which subjugates whole continents, with reichsbürgerlich Chinese petty haggling, and by shaming the restless gigantic spirit of invention in industry with honest, stolid clinging to time-honoured, half-guild slovenliness. Yet in one point the Prussian bourgeoisie approaches its British ideal: in the shameless maltreatment of the working class. If, considered as a corporate body, by and large, it also lags behind the Britons in this respect, this is to be explained simply by the fact that, for lack of courage, intelligence, and energy, it has never, by and large, as a national class, achieved anything and will never achieve anything worth mentioning. It does not exist in a national manner; it exists only provincial, municipal, local, privatim, and in these forms it confronts the working class even more ruthlessly than the English bourgeoisie does. Why, since the period of the Restoration, did the peoples long for Napoleon, whom they had just chained to a lonely rock in the Mediterranean? Because the despotism of a genius is more bearable than the despotism of an idiot. Thus the English worker can still lay claim to a certain national pride vis-à-vis the German worker, for the master who gags him gags the whole world, whereas the master of the German worker, the German bourgeois, is a universal lackey, and nothing is more fatal, more humiliating, than to be the lackey of a lackey.

As a historical document of the cynicism of our bourgeoisie towards the working class, we publish verbatim the “Arbeiterkarte” [worker’s card] which the proletarians employed on municipal works in the good city of Cologne must sign.

Arbeiterkarte
§ 1. Every worker must promptly obey the instructions and orders of all municipal supervisory officials, who are at the same time sworn in as police officials. Disobedience and insubordination shall result in immediate dismissal.

§ 2. Without special permission of the building inspector, no worker may cross from one section to another or leave the construction site.
§ 3. Workers who purloin carts, cart boards, or other implements from another section in order to use them for their work shall be dismissed.
§ 4. Drunkenness, breach of the peace, incitement to quarrel, dispute, or brawling shall result in immediate dismissal from work.—In addition, in the appropriate cases, legal prosecution of the guilty parties shall ensue through the competent courts.
§ 5. Anyone who appears at the workplace ten minutes too late shall receive no work for the half-day in question; in the third case of repetition, complete exclusion from work may occur.
§ 6. When workers are dismissed at their own request or as a punishment, their payment shall take place on the next regular pay-day in proportion to the work performed by them.
§ 7. The dismissal of the worker shall be noted on the Arbeitskarte. —If the dismissal takes place as a punishment, the worker shall, according to the circumstances of the case, be refused re-employment on the construction site in question or on all municipal works.
§ 8. The police authority shall in every case be informed of the punitive dismissal of workers and of its cause.
§ 9. If the workers have complaints to make against the building supervisory official, these shall be brought by an elected deputation consisting of three workers before the municipal master builder. The latter shall investigate the subject of the complaint on the spot and decide upon it.
§ 10. Working time is fixed from half-past six in the morning until 12 o’clock noon and from one o’clock in the afternoon until darkness in the evening.
(Fine style!)
§ 11. Under these conditions the worker shall receive employment.
§ 12. Payment shall be effected on Saturday afternoon on the construction site.

The sworn building inspector, whose orders are to be obeyed in the first instance.
Cologne.
Signature of the worker.
{
Is placed in the section of the
resp. mark, etc., and has etc.
Signature of the building inspector.

Could Russian ukases from the Autocrat of all the Russias to his subjects be couched in a more Asiatic fashion?

The municipal and even “all municipal supervisory officials, who are at the same time sworn in as police officials,” are to be “promptly obeyed. Disobedience and insubordination shall result in immediate dismissal.” Thus, above all, passive obedience! Afterward, according to § 9, the workers are granted the right “to bring complaints before the municipal master builder.” This pasha decides irrevocably—naturally against the workers, if only in the interest of the hierarchy. And once he has decided, once the workers have fallen under the municipal interdict—woe betide them, they are then placed under police supervision. The last semblance of their civil freedom is lost, for according to § 8, “the police authority shall in every case be informed of the punitive dismissal of workers and of its cause.”

But, gentlemen, when you dismiss the worker, when you have terminated the contract in which he staked his labour against your wage, what on earth has the police then still to do with this cancellation of a civil contract? Is the municipal worker a convict in a house of correction? Is he denounced to the police because he has violated the deference owed to you, his born, most wise and noble authority? Would you not laugh at the citizen who denounced you to the police because you had broken this or that supply contract, or failed to pay a bill on the day it fell due, or drank beyond measure on New Year’s Eve? But of course! In the case of the worker—you do not stand toward him in a civil contractual relationship; you sit enthroned above him with all the irritability of lords by the grace of God! The police are to keep a conduct list on him in your service.

According to § 5, anyone who arrives ten minutes late is punished by losing half a working day. What a proportion between offence and penalty! You have kept yourselves centuries behind the times, and the worker is not to be allowed to show up ten minutes past half-past six without losing half a working day?

In order, finally, that this patriarchal arbitrariness may not be impaired in any way and that the worker may fall purely at the mercy of your caprice, you have left the mode of punishment as far as possible to the discretion of your liveried servants. In “appropriate cases,” i.e., in cases that appear appropriate to you, according to § 4, dismissal and denunciation to the police are followed by “legal prosecution of the guilty parties before the competent courts.” According to § 5, the complete exclusion of the worker “may” occur if he comes ten minutes past half-past six too late for the third time. In the case of dismissal as a punishment, according to § 7, “the worker shall, according to the circumstances of the case, be refused employment on the construction site in question or on all municipal works.” etc., etc.

What scope for the whims of the displeased bourgeois in this criminal code of our municipal Catos, these great men who fawn in the dust before Berlin!

One may gather from this model law what kind of charter our bourgeoisie, were it at the helm, would impose upon the people.