The "Débat social" of February 6 on the Democratic Association

[Karl Marx]

["Deutsche-Brüsseler-Zeitung" No. 13, February 13, 1848]

The "Débat social" of February 6 defends the Brussels Democratic Association and its branch societies. We permit ourselves a few remarks on the manner of its defence.

It may be in the interest of the Belgian radical party to demonstrate to the Catholics that they are acting against their own interest by denouncing the Belgian radical party. It may be in the interest of the Belgian radical party to distinguish between the lower and higher clergy and to return to the clergy on the whole in compliments what it tells one part of them in truths. We understand nothing of this. We are only astonished that the *Débat* could have overlooked that the attacks of the Flemish Catholic newspapers against the *associations démocratiques* were at once reprinted in the *Indépendance*, and the *Indépendance*, as far as we know, is no Catholic paper.

The "Débat social" declares that the Belgians are demanding political reforms by means of the democratic associations.

We understand that the *Débat* momentarily forgets the cosmopolitan character of the Democratic Association. Perhaps it has not even forgotten it. It has merely remembered that a society which strives to promote democracy in all countries will first of all act upon the country in which it resides.

The "Débat social" does not content itself with saying what the Belgians want with the democratic associations; it goes further, it says what the Belgians do not want with them, what therefore one must not want if one belongs to the association which the Belgians have founded in order to demand political reforms. Avis aux étrangers! [Warning to the foreigner!]

"The political reforms which the Belgians are demanding by means of the democratic associations," says the *Débat*, "are not those utopias which certain democrats chase after in countries where the social institutions hold out no hope of effective reforms, where it is therefore just as rational to think of castles in Spain as of the modest well-being of the already free peoples. He who has nothing does just as well to dream at once of millions as of a hundred thalers of rent or profit."

The *Débat* is obviously speaking here of the Communists.

We should like to ask him whether the "modest well-being" of "free" England manifests itself in the fact that the poor rate grows faster than the population?

We should like to ask him whether by "the modest well-being of the free peoples" he understands the Flemish misery?

We should like to worm out of him the secret by which he proposes to put 100 thalers of profit or rent in place of wages. Or does he understand by "the modest well-being of the free peoples" the modest well-being of the free capitalists and landed proprietors?

Finally, we should like to ask him whether the Brussels Democratic Association commissioned him to give the lie to the utopians who do not believe in "the modest happiness of the free peoples"?

But the "Débat social" is obviously not speaking of Communists in general, but of German Communists, who, because the political development of their fatherland does not allow them to found either a German *Alliance* or a German *Association libérale*, sink into the arms of communism out of despair.

We point out to the *Débat* that communism originates from England and France and not from Germany.

That German communism is the most resolute opponent of all utopianism and, far from excluding historical development, rather bases itself upon it – this assurance we for the time being return to the "Débat social" in exchange for its assurance.

Germany has lagged behind in political development, it has a long political development to go through. We should be the last to deny this. But we believe on the other hand that a country of more than 40 million inhabitants, when it is preparing a revolution, will not seek the measure of its movement in the radicalism of small free countries.

Does the *Débat* understand by communism the highlighting of class antagonisms and of class struggle? Then it is not communism that is communist, but political economy, bourgeois society.

We know that Robert Peel prophesied that the class antagonism of modern society must erupt in a terrible crisis. We know that Guizot himself in his "History of Civilisation" believes he is depicting nothing but definite forms of class struggle. But Peel and Guizot are utopians. Realists are men who regard the very utterance of social facts as an offence against a benevolent worldly wisdom.

The "Débat social" is free to admire and idealise North America and Switzerland.

We ask him whether the political constitution of North America could ever be introduced in Europe without great social upheavals? We believe, for example – and the *Débat* may pardon us the impertinence – that the English Charter, in order to be put forward not by isolated enthusiasts for universal suffrage but by a great national party, presupposed a protracted unification of the English workers into a class, that this Charter is striven for with a quite different intent and must bring about quite different social consequences than the constitution of America and Switzerland ever strove for or ever brought about. In our eyes those are utopians who separate political forms from their social foundation and present them as general, abstract dogmas.

As the "Débat social" seeks to defend the Democratic Association by simultaneously eliminating "certain democrats" who will not be content with the "modest well-being of the free peoples", it proves this further when it comes to speak of the free trade discussions in the Association.

"Six sessions," says the *Débat*, "were devoted to the discussion of this interesting question, and many workers from the various workshops of our city put forward arguments here that would not have been out of place at the famous Congress of Economists held at Brussels in the past September."

The "Débat social" previously notes that the Association voted almost unanimously for absolute free trade among all peoples as an aim of democracy.

Afterwards, in the same number, the *Débat* has a quite ordinary speech by M. Le Hardy de Beaulieu, scraped together from the most decayed leftovers of the English free trade cookshops.

And finally Cobden is celebrated.

Will anyone, after this account by the "Débat social", doubt that the Association voted by a large majority for free trade in the sense of the Congress of Economists, in the sense of the bourgeois free traders?