The year 1847 was certainly the most stormy we have experienced 
for a very long time. A constitution and a United Diet in Prussia’; 
an unexpectedly rapid awakening in political life and a general 
arming against Austria in Italy; a civil war in Switzerland; a new 
Parliament of pronounced radical complexion in Britain; in France 
scandals and Reform banquets; in America the conquest of Mexico 
by the United States—that is a series of changes and movements such 
as no other recent year can show. 

The last turning point in history was the year i830. The July 
revolution in France and the Reform Bill in Britain finally secured 
the victory of the bourgeoisie; and in Britain this was, indeed, 
the victory of the industrial bourgeoisie, the manufacturers, 
over the non-industrial bourgeoisie, the rentiers. Belgium, and to a 
certain extent Switzerland, followed suit; here again the bourgeoisie 
triumphed.” Poland rose in revolt,?” Italy chafed under Metter- 
nich’s heel. Germany was seething. All countries were preparing for 
a mighty struggle. 

But after 1830 there was everywhere a set-back. Poland fell, the 
insurgents in Romagna were dispersed,”’' the movement in Germa- 
ny was suppressed. The French bourgeoisie defeated the republicans 
in France itself, and betrayed the liberals of other countries whom it 
had spurred on to revolt. The liberal ministry in Britain could 
accomplish nothing. Finally, in 1840, reaction was in full swing. 
Poland, Italy, and Germany were politically dead: the Berliner 
politisches Wochenblatt* sat enthroned in Prussia; Herr DahImann’s 

all-too-clever constitution was repealed in Hanover?”; the decisions 
of the Vienna Conference of 1834 were in full force.?”> The 
Conservatives and the Jesuits were thriving in Switzerland. In 
Belgium, the Catholics were at the helm. Guizot ruled supreme over 
France. In Britain, under pressure from the growing power of Peel, 
the Whig government was in its last throes, and the Chartists were 
vainly endeavouring to reorganise their ranks after their great defeat 
of 1839.2” Everywhere the reactionary party was victorious; 
everywhere the progressive parties were broken up and dispersed. 
The arrest of the historical movement—this seemed to be the final 
result of the mighty struggles of 1830. 

1840 was, however, also the peak of reaction just as 1830 had been 
the peak of the revolutionary movement of the bourgeoisie. From 
1840 onward the movements against the existing state of affairs 
began afresh. Though often defeated, in the long run they gained 
more and more ground. While in England the Chartists reorganised 
themselves and became stronger than ever, Peel was forced time and 
again to betray his party, dealing it a fatal blow by the repeal of the 
Corn Laws,’ and finally himself to resign. The radicals gained 
ground in Switzerland. In Germany, and especially in Prussia, the 
liberals were pressing their demands more vigorously with every 
year. The liberals emerged victorious from the Belgian elections of 
1847. France was an exception, for there the reactionary ministry 
secured a triumphant majority in the 1846 elections; and Italy 
remained dead, until Pius IX mounted the papal throne, and at the 
end of 1846 attempted a few dubious reforms. 

So came the year 1847, and with it a series of victories for the 
progressive parties of nearly all countries. Even where they sustained 
defeat, this was more advantageous to them than an immediate 
victory would have been. 

The year 1847 decided nothing, but everywhere it brought the 
parties into sharp and clear confrontation; it brought no final 
solution of any questions, but it posed al] questions in such a way that 
now they must be solved. 

Among all the movements and changes of the year 1847 the most 
important were those in Prussia, in Italy and in Switzerland. 

In Prussia, Frederick William IV was at length forced to grant a 
constitution. The sterile Don Quixote of Sans-Souci,?” after long 
struggles and labour-pains, was delivered of a constitution which was 
to establish for all time the victory of the feudalist, patriarchal, 
abolutist, bureaucratic, and clerical reaction. But he had miscalcu- 
lated. The bourgeoisie was strong enough by then to turn even that 
constitution into a weapon against the king and all the reactionary 

classes of society. In Prussia, as everywhere else, the bourgeoisie 
began by refusing him money. The king was in despair. One could 
say that in the first days after the refusal of the money Prussia was 
without a king. The country was in the throes of revolution without 
knowing it. Then by good luck came the fifteen million from Russia; 
Frederick William was king again, the bourgeoisie of the Diet 
crumpled up in alarm, and the revolutionary storm clouds scattered. 
The Prussian bourgeoisie was, for the time being, defeated. But it 
had made a great step forward, had won for itself a forum, had given 
the king a proof of its power, and had worked the country up into a 
great state of agitation. The question: who shall govern Prussia—the 
alliance of nobles, bureaucrats, and priests headed by the king, or the 
bourgeoisie—is now posed in such a way that it must be decided in 
favour of one side or of the other. In the United Diet a compromise 
between the two parties was still possible, but today no longer. Now it 
is a matter of life-and-death struggle between the two. To make 
matters worse, the committees (those unhappy inventions of the 
Berlin constitution manufacturers) are now assembling.”” They will 
make the already complicated legal issues so enormously more 
involved, that no man will any longer know where he stands. They 
will tie matters up into a Gordian knot which will have to be cut with 
the sword. They will complete the final preparations for the bourgeois 
revolution in Prussia. 

We can therefore await the advent of this Prussian revolution with 
the utmost calm. The United Diet will have to be convened in 1849 
whether the king wants it or not. We will give His Majesty a 
breathing space till then, but not a moment longer. Then he will have 
to resign his sceptre and his “unimpaired” crown?’ to the Christian 
and the Jewish bourgeois of his realm. 

Thus 1847 was politically a very good year for the Prussian 
bourgeoisie in spite of their temporary defeat. The bourgeoisie and 
petty bourgeoisie of the other German states have also noted this and 
shown the most heartfelt sympathy towards them. They know that 
the victory of the Prussian bourgeoisie is their own victory. 

In Italy we have witnessed the amazing spectacle of the man who 
occupies the most reactionary position in the whole of Europe, who 
represents the petrified ideology of the Middle Ages, the Pope,* 
taking the lead in a liberal movement. The movement grew to power 
in a night, carrying along with it the Austrian archduke of ‘Tuscany? 
and the traitor Charles Albert of Sardinia, undermining the throne 

of Ferdinand of Naples, its waves sweeping over Lombardy to the 
Tyrolese and Styrian Alps. 

Today the movement in Italy resembles that which took place in 
Prussia from 1807 to 1812.?” As in Prussia of those days, there are 
two issues: external independence and internal reforms. For the 
moment there is no demand for a constitution, but only for 
administrative reforms. Any serious conflict with the government is 
avoided in the meantime so as to maintain as united a front as 
possible in face of the foreign overlord. What kind of reforms are 
these? To whose advantage are they? In the first place to that of the 
bourgeoisie. The press is to be favoured; the bureaucracy to be made 
to serve the interests of the bourgeoisie (cf. the Sardinian reforms, 
the Roman consulta,**° and the reorganisation of the ministries); the 
bourgeois are to be granted extended influence on communal 
administration; the bon plaisir of the nobles and of the bureaucracy 
is to be restricted; the bourgeoisie is to be armed as guardia civica. 
Hitherto all the reforms have been and could be only in the interests 
of the bourgeoisie. Compare the Prussian reforms of Napoleonic 
times. These are exactly the same, only that in many respects they go 
further: the administration made subservient to the interests of the 
bourgeoisie; the arbitrary power of the nobility and the bureaucracy 
broken; municipal self-government established; a militia inaugu- 
rated; the corvée abolished. As earlier in Prussia, so today in Italy, 
the bourgeoisie, owing to its growing wealth and, in particular, to the 
growing importance of industry and commerce in the life of the 
people as a whole, has become the class upon which the country’s 
liberation from foreign domination mainly depends. 

The movement in Italy is thus a decisively bourgeois movement. 
All the classes now inspired with a zeal for reform, from the princes 
and the nobility down to the pifferari and the lazzaroni,”*' appear for 
the nonce as bourgeois, and the Pope himself is the First Bourgeois 
in Italy. But once the Austrian yoke has finally been thrown off, all 
these classes will be greatly disillusioned. Once the bourgeoisie has 
finished off the foreign enemy, it will start on the separation of 
the sheep from the goats at home; then the princes and the counts 
will again call out to Austria for help, but it will be too late, and then 
the workers of Milan, of Florence, and of Naples will realise that their 
work is only really beginning. 

Finally Switzerland. For the first time in its history, this country has 
played a definite part in the European system of states, for the first 
time it has dared to act decisively and has had the courage to enter 

the arena as a federal republic instead of as heretofore an 
agglomeration of twenty-two antagonistic cantons, utter strangers to 
one another. By most resolutely putting down the civil war, it has 
assured the supremacy of the central power—in a word, has become 
centralised. The de facto centralisation will have to be legalised 
through the impending reform of the Federal Pact. 

Who, we again ask, is going to profit by the outcome of the war, by 
federal reform, by the reorganisation of the Sonderbund cantons? 
The victorious party, the party which was victorious in the individual 
cantons from 1830 to 1834, the liberals and radicals, 1.e., the 
bourgeoisie and the peasantry. The rule of the patriciate in the 
former imperial towns was already overthrown as a result of the July 
revolution. Where it had been practically restored, as in Berne and 
Geneva, revolutions followed in 1846. Where it as yet remained in- 
tact, as for instance in Basle City, it was shaken to its foundations 
in the same year. There was little feudal aristocracy in Switzerland, 
and where it still survived it found its chief strength in an alliance 
with the herdsmen of the upper Alps. These men were the last, the 
most obstinate and the most rabid enemies of the bourgeoisie. They 
were the mainstay of the reactionary elements in the liberal cantons. 
Aided by the Jesuits and the pietists,282 they covered the whole of 
Switzerland with a network of. reactionary conspiracies (cf. the 
canton of Vaud). They thwarted all the plans laid before the Diet 
by the bourgeoisie, and hindered the final defeat of the philistine 
patriciate in the former imperial cities. 

In 1847 these last enemies of the Swiss bourgeoisie were 
completely broken. 

In almost all the cantons the Swiss bourgeoisie had had a pretty 
free hand in commerce and industry. In so far as the guilds still 
existed, they did little to hamper bourgeois development. Tolls 
within the country hardly existed. Wherever the bourgeoisie had 
developed to any considerable extent, political power was in its 
hands. But although it had made good progress in the individual 
cantons and had found support there, the main thing was still 
lacking, namely centralisation. Whereas feudalism, patriarchalism, 
and philistinism flourish in separated provinces and individual 
towns, the bourgeoisie needs for its growth as wide a field as possible; 
instead of twenty-two small cantons it needed one large Switzerland. 
Cantonal sovereignty, which best suited the conditions in the old 
Switzerland, had become a crushing handicap for the bourgeoisie. 
The bourgeoisie needed a centralised power, strong enough to 

impose a particular course of development on the legislation of the 
individual cantons and, by sheer weight of influence, to cancel out 
the differences in their constitutions and laws, to wipe out the 
vestiges of the feudal, patriarchal and philistine legislation, and 
energetically to represent the interests of the Swiss bourgeoisie in 
relation to other countries. 

The bourgeoisie has won for itself this centralised power. 

But did not the peasants also help in overthrowing the Sonder- 
bund? Certainly they did! So far as the peasants are concerned, they 
will play the same part towards the bourgeoisie as they played for so 
long towards the petty bourgeoisie. The peasants will remain the 
exploited arm of the bourgeoisie, they will fight its battles for it, 
weave its calico and ribbons, and provide the recruits for its 
proletariat. What else can they do? They are owners, like the 
bourgeois, and for the moment their interests are almost identical 
with those of the bourgeoisie. All the political measures which thev 
are strong enough to put through, are hardly more advantageous to 
the bourgeoisie than to the peasants themselves. Nevertheless, they 
are weak in comparison with the bourgeoisie, because the latter are 
more wealthy and have in their hands the lever of all political power 
in our century—industry. With the bourgeoisie, the peasantry can 
achieve much; against the bourgeoisie, nothing. 

It is true that a time will come when the fleeced and impoverished 
section of the peasantry will unite with the proletariat, which by then 
will be further developed, and will declare war on the bour- 
geoisie—but that does not concern us here. 

Enough that the expulsion of the Jesuits and their associates, those 
organised opponents of the bourgeoisie, the general introduction of 
civil instead of religious education, the seizure of most of the church 
estates by the state, benefit above all the bourgeoisie. 

Thus the common factor in the three most noteworthy movements 
of the year 1847 is that all are primarily and chiefly in the interests of 
ile bourgeoisie. The party of progress was, everywhere, the party of 
the bourgeoisie. 

It is indeed the characteristic feature of these movements that 
those countries which remained backward in 1830 are precisely those 
which last year took the first decisive steps to raise themselves to the 
ievel of 1830—that 1s, to secure the victory of the bourgeoisie. 

So far, then, we have seen that the year 1847 was a brilliant vear 
for the bourgeoisie. 

Let us proceed. 

In Britain a new parliament has assembled, a parhament which. in 
the words of John Bright the Quaker, is the most hourgecis ever 

convened. John Bright is the best authority in the matter, seeing that 
he himself is the most determined bourgeois in the whole of Britain. 
But the bourgeois John Bright is not the bourgeois who rules in 
France or who thunders with pathetic bravado against Frederick 
William IV. When John Bright speaks of a bourgeois he means a 
manufacturer. Ever since 1688, separate sections of the bourgeois 
class have been ruling in England. But, in order to facilitate their 
seizure of power, the bourgeoisie has allowed the aristocrats, its 
dependent debtors, to retain their rule in name. Whereas, in reality, 
the struggle in England is between sections of the bourgeoisie, 
between rentiers and manufacturers, the manufacturers are able to 
represent it as a struggle between the aristocracy and the 
bourgeoisie, or, in case of necessity, as a struggle between the 
aristocracy and the people. The manufacturers have no interest in 
maintaining the appearance of government by the aristocracy, for 
the lords, the baronets and the squires do not owe them a farthing. 
On the other hand they have a great interest in destroying this 
appearance, for with it the rentiers lose their last sheet-anchor. The 
present bourgeois or manufacturers’ parliament will see to this. It 
will change the old feudal-looking England into a more or less 
modern country of bourgeois organisation. It will bring the British 
constitution nearer to those of France and of Belgium. It will 
complete the victory of the English industrial bourgeoisie. 

Another advance of the bourgeoisie: for an advance within the 
bourgeoisie is also an extension and a strengthening of bourgeois 
rule. 

France alone appears to be an exception. The power which fell into 
the hands of the whole of the big bourgeoisie in 1830 is being year by 
year increasingly limited to the rule of the wealthiest section of this 
big bourgeoisie, to the rule of the rentiers and the stock exchange 
speculators. They have made the majority of the big bourgeoisie 
serve their interest. The minority, which is headed by a section of the 
manufacturers and shipping owners, is continually diminishing. This 
minority has now made common cause with the middle and petty 
bourgeoisie who have no electoral rights and celebrates its alliance at 
reform banquets. It despairs of ever coming to power with the 
present electorate. After long hesitation, it has made up its mind to 
promise a share of political power to the sections of the bourgeoisie 
next below itself, and especially the bourgeois ideologists, as being 
the least dangerous—the lawyers, doctors, and so on. It is, of 
course, still very far from being able to keep its promise. 

Thus also in France we see approaching the struggle within the 
bourgeoisie which in Britain has already been almost ended. But, as 

always in France, the situation is more sharply defined, more 
revolutionary than elsewhere. This distinct division into two camps is 
also an advance for the bourgeoisie. 

In Belgium the bourgeoisie won a decisive victory in the elections 
of 1847. The Catholic ministry was forced to resign, and here also 
the liberal bourgeoisie now rule for the time being. 

In America we have witnessed the conquest of Mexico and have 
rejoiced at it.**° It is also an advance when a country which has 
hitherto been exclusively wrapped up in its own affairs, perpetually 
rent with civil wars, and completely hindered in its development, a 
country whose best prospect had been to become industrially subject 
to Britain—when such a country is forcibly drawn into the historical 
process. It is to the interest of its own development that Mexico will 
in future be placed under the tutelage of the United States. The 
evolution of the whole of America will profit by the fact that the 
United States, by the possession of California, obtains command of 
the Pacific. But again we ask: “Who is going to profit immediately by 
the war?” The bourgeoisie alone. The North Americans acquire new 
regions in California and New Mexico for the creation of fresh 
capital, that is, for calling new bourgeois into being, and enriching 
those already in existence; for all capital created today flows into the 
hands of the bourgeoisie. And what about the proposed cut through 
the Tehuantepec isthmus?*** Who is likely to gain by that? Who else 
but the American shipping owners? Rule over the Pacific, who will 
gain by that but these same shipping owners? The new customers 
for the products of industry, customers who will come into being in 
the newly acquired territories—who will supply their needs? None 
other than the American manufacturers. 

Thus also in America the bourgeoisie has made great advances, 
and if its representatives now oppose the war, that only proves that 
they fear that these advances have in some ways been bought too 
dear. 

Even in quite barbarous lands the bourgeoisie is advancing. In 
Russia, industry is developing by leaps and bounds and is succeeding 
in converting even the boyars into bourgeois. Both in Russia and 
Poland serfdom is being restricted and the nobility thereby 
weakened in the interest of the bourgeoisie, and a class of free 
peasants is being created which the bourgeoisie everywhere needs. 
The Jews are being persecuted—entirely in the interest of the settled 
Christian bourgeois, whose business was spoiled by the pedlars.—In 
Hungary, the feudal magnates are more and more changing into 
wholesale corn and wool merchants and cattle dealers, and 
consequently now appear in the Diet as bourgeois.—What of all 

the glorious advances of “civilisation” in such lands as Turkey, 
Egypt, Tunis, Persia, and other barbarous countries? They are 
nothing else but a preparation for the advent of a future bourgeoisie. 
In these countries the word of the prophet is being fulfilled: 
“Prepare ye the way of the Lord....* Lift up your heads, O ye gates; 
and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shali 
come in. Who is this King of glory?”’ The bourgeois! 

Wherever we look, the bourgeoisie are making stupendous 
progress. They are holding their heads high, and haughtily 
challenge their enemies. They expect a decisive victory, and their 
hopes will not be disappointed. They intend to shape the whole 
world according to their standard; and, on a considerable portion of 
the earth’s surface, they will succeed. 

We are no friends of the bourgeoisie. That is common knowledge. 
But this time we do not grudge the bourgeoisie their triumph. We 
can chuckle over the haughty looks which the bourgeois deign to 
bestow (especially in Germany) upon the apparently tiny band of 
democrats and Communists. We have no objection if everywhere 
they force through their purposes. 

Nay more. We cannot forbear an ironical smile when we observe 
the terrible earnestness, the pathetic enthusiasm with which the 
bourgeois strive to achieve their aims. They really believe that they 
are working on their own behalf! They are so short-sighted as to 
fancy that through their triumph the world will assume its 
final configuration. Yet nothing is more clear than that they are 
everywhere preparing the way for us, for the democrats and the 
Communists; than that they will at most win a few years of troubled 
enjoyment, only to be then immediately overthrown. Behind them 
stands everywhere the proletariat, sometimes participating in their 
endeavours and partly in their illusions, as in Italy and Switzerland, 
sometimes silent and reserved, but secretly preparing the overthrow 
of the bourgeoisie, as in France and Germany; finally, in Britain and 
America, in open rebellion against the ruling bourgeoisie. 

We can do still more. We can say all this to the bourgeoisie straight 
out, we can lay our cards on the table. Let them know in advance that 
they are working only in our interest. They still cannot for that 
reason give up their fight against the absolute monarchy, the 
nobility, and the clergy. They must conquer—or already now go 
under. 

In Germany in a very short time they will even have to ask for our 
help. 

So just fight bravely on, most gracious masters of capital! We need 
you for the present; here and there we even need you as rulers. You 
have to clear the vestiges of the Middle Ages and of absolute 
monarchy out of our path; you have to annihilate patriarchalism; 
you have to carry out centralisation; you have to convert the more or 
less propertyless classes into genuine proletarians, into recruits for 
us; by your factories and your commercial relationships you must 
create for us the basis of the material means which the proletariat 
needs for the attainment of freedom. In recompense whereof you 
shall be allowed to rule for a short time. You shall be allowed to 
dictate your laws, to bask in the rays of the majesty you have 
created, to spread your banquets in the halls of kings, and to take 
the beautiful princess to wife—but do not forget that 

“The hangman stands at the door!’ 

Signed: F. E.