Cologne, December 9. We have never concealed the fact that we
do not proceed from a legal basis, but from a revolutionary basis. Now
the government has for its part abandoned the false pretense of a legal
basis. It has taken its stand on a revolutionary basis, for the counter-revolutionary
basis, too, is revolutionary.

S 6 of the law of April 6, 1848, ordains:

"The right to approve all laws as well as to determine the national
budget and to pass taxes must in any case belong to the future representatives
of the people."

S 13 of the law of April 8, 1848, reads:

"The Assembly convened on the basis of this law is called upon to establish
the future Constitution by agreement with the Crown and during its lifetime
to exercise the prerogatives of the former Imperial Diet, in particular
regarding the passing of taxes."

The government sends this Assembly of conciliators to the devil, imposes
a so-called constitution [121] upon the country and levies taxes which
the representatives of the people had refused to grant it.

The Camphausen epic, a sort of pompous legal Jobsiad, [122] was
brought to an abrupt end by the Prussian government. In retaliation the
great Camphausen, the author of this epic, continues coolly to deliberate
in Frankfurt as envoy of this same Prussian government, and goes on scheming
with the Bassermanns in the interests of that same Prussian government.
This Camphausen, who invented the theory of agreement in order to preserve
the legal basis, that is, in order first of all to cheat the revolution
of the respect that is due to it, at the same time invented the mines which
were later to blow up the legal basis together with the theory of agreement.

This man provided for indirect elections, which produced an assembly
to which, at a moment of sudden revolt, the government could shout: Trop
tard! He recalled the Prince of Prussia, the head of the counter-revolution,
and even resorted to an official lie to transform Prince's flight into
an educational journey. [123] He abolished neither the old Prussian laws
dealing with political crimes nor the old courts. Under his government
the old bureaucracy and the old army gained time to recover from their
fright and to reorganize their whole structure. All the leading personalities
of the old regime were left untouched in their positions. Under Camphausen
the camarilla carried on a war in Poznan, while he himself carried on a
war in Denmark. The Danish war was intended as a channel to draw off the
superabundant patriotism [124] of the German youth, on whom after their
return the police inflicted fitting disciplinary punishment. This war was
to give some popularity to General Wrangle and his infamous regiments of
the Guards and in general to rehabilitate the Prussian army. This purpose
achieved, the sham war had to be ended at any price by a disgraceful armistice,
which was once again negotiated at Frankfurt between the same Camphausen
and the German National Assembly. The outcome of the Danish war was the
appointment of the "Commander-in-Chief of the two Brandenburgs" [125] and
the return to Berlin of the regiments of the Guards which had been driven
out in March.

And the war which the Potsdam camarilla waged in Poznan under
the auspices of Camphausen!

The war in Poznan was more than a war against the Prussian revolution.
It was the fall of Vienna, the fall of Italy, the defeat of the heroes
of June. It was the first decisive victory gained by the Russian Tsar over
the European revolution. And all this was done under the auspices of the
great Camphausen, the thinking friend of history, [126] the knight of the
great debate, the champion of negotiation.

Under Camphausen and with his help the counter-revolution seized
all important positions; it prepared an army ready for action while the
Assembly of conciliators debated.

Under Hansemann-Pinto, [127] the Minister of Action, the old police
force was fitted out with new uniforms, and the bourgeoisie waged a war
-- as bitter as it was petty -- against the people. The conclusion from
these premises was drawn under Brandenburg's rule. The only things needed
for this were a moustache and sword instead of a head.

When Camphausen resigned we exclaimed:

He has sown reaction as interpreted by the bourgeoisie, he will
reap reaction as interpreted by the aristocracy and absolutism.

We have no doubt that His Excellency, the Prussian envoy Camphausen,
at this moment regards himself a feudal lord and has come to a peaceable
agreement with his "misunderstanding".

One should not, however, commit the error of ascribing initiatives
of world historical significance to such mediocrities as a Camphausen and
a Hansemann. They were nothing but the instruments of a class. Their language,
their actions, were merely the official echo of the class which brought
them to the forefront. They were simply the big bourgeoisie placed in the
forefront.

The members of this class formed the liberal opposition in the
late United Provincial Diet of blessed memory, which Camphausen resurrected
for a moment.

The gentlemen of this liberal opposition have been reproached
with having deserted their principles after the March revolution. This
is a fallacy.

The big landowners and capitalists -- and they were the only ones
to be represented in the United Provincial Diet -- in short the money-bags,
became wealthier and more educated. With the development of bourgeois society
in Prussia, in other words, with the development of industry, trade and
agriculture, the old class distinctions had, on the one hand lost their
material basis.

The aristocracy itself was largely bourgeoisified. Instead of
dealing in loyalty, love and faith, it now dealt primarily in beetroot,
liquor and wool. Its tournaments were held on the wool market. On the other
hand, the absolutist state, which in the course of development lost its
old social basis, became a restrictive fetter for the new bourgeois society
with its changed mode of production and its changed requirements. The bourgeoisie
had to claim its share of political power, if only by reason of its material
interests. Only the bourgeoisie itself could legally assert its commercial
and industrial requirements. It had to wrest the administration of these,
its "most sacred interests" from the hands of an antiquated bureaucracy
which was both ignorant and arrogant. It had to demand control over the
national wealth, whose creator it considered itself. Having deprived the
bureaucracy of the monopoly of so-called education and conscious of the
fact that it possesses a far superior knowledge of the real requirements
of bourgeois society, the bourgeoisie had also the ambition to secure for
itself a political status in keeping with its social status. To attain
this aim it had to be able freely to debate its own interests and views
and the actions of the government. It called this "freedom of the press".
The bourgeoisie had to be able to enter freely into associations. It called
this the "right of free association". As the necessary consequence of free
competition, it had likewise to demand religious liberty and so on. Before
March 1848 the Prussian bourgeoisie was rapidly moving towards the realization
of all its aims.

The Prussian state was in financial difficulties. Its borrowing
power was exhausted. This was the secret reason for the convocation of
the United Provincial Diet. Although the government struggled against its
fate and ungraciously dissolved the United Provincial Diet, lack of money
and of credit facilities would inevitably have driven it gradually into
the arms of the bourgeoisie. Those who are kings by the grace of God have
always bartered their privileges for hard cash, as did the feudal barons.
The first great act of this historic deal in all Christian Germanic states
was the emancipation of the serfs; the second act was the constitutional
monarchy. "L'argent n'a pas de mattre", but the maitres cease to be maitres
as soon as they are demonetized.

And so the liberal opposition in the United Provincial Diet was
simply the bourgeoisie in opposition to a political form that was no longer
appropriate to its interests and needs. In order to oppose the Court, the
bourgeoisie had to court the people.

It may have really imagined that its opposition was for the people.

Obviously, the rights and liberties which the bourgeoisie sought
for itself could be demanded from the government only under the slogan:
popular rights and popular liberties.

This opposition, as we have said, was rapidly moving towards its
goal when the February storm broke.

Cologne, December 11. When the March flood – a flood in miniature
– subsided it left on the surface of Berlin no prodigies, no revolutionary
giants, but traditional creatures, thickset bourgeois figures-the liberals
of the United Provincial Diet, the representatives of the conscious Prussian
bourgeoisie. The main contingents for the new ministries were supplied
by the Rhineland and Silesia, the provinces with the most advanced bourgeoisie.
They were followed by a whole train of Rhenish lawyers. As the bourgeoisie
was pushed into the background by the feudal aristocracy, the Rhineland
and Silesia were replaced in the cabinets by the old Prussian provinces.
The only link of the Brandenburg cabinet with the Rhineland is through
a single Elberfeld Tory. Hansemann and von der Heydt! These two names exemplify
the whole difference between March and December 1848 for the Prussian bourgeoisie.

The Prussian bourgeoisie reached the political summit, not by
means of a peaceful deal with the Crown, as it had desired, but as the
result of a revolution. It was to defend, not its own interests, but those
of the people – for a popular movement had prepared the way for the bourgeoisie
– against the Crown, in other words, against itself. For the bourgeoisie
regarded the Crown simply as a cloak provided by the grace of God, a cloak
that was to conceal its own profane interests, The inviolability of its
own interests and of the political forms appropriate to these interests,
expressed in constitutional language, is inviolability of the Crown. Hence
the enthusiasm of the German bourgeoisie and in particular of the Prussian
bourgeoisie for the constitutional monarchy. Although the February revolution
together with its repercussions in Germany was welcomed by the Prussian
bourgeoisie, because the revolution had placed the helm of state into its
hands, it also upset the plans of the bourgeoisie, because its rule was
thus bound by conditions which it neither wanted nor was able to fulfill.

The bourgeoisie did not raise a finger; it simply allowed the
people to fight for it. Hence the rule it was called upon to exercise was
not the rule of a commander who has defeated his adversary, but the rule
of a committee of public safety which has been entrusted by the victorious
people with the protection of its interests.

Camphausen was still clearly aware of this embarrassing position,
and the weakness of his cabinet was entirely due to this feeling and the
circumstances that gave rise to it. Even the most shameless actions of
his government are therefore tinctured by a sort of shamefaced blush. Open
shamelessness and insolence were Hansemann's privileges. The red complexion
is all that distinguishes these two artists from one another.

The March revolution in Prussia should not be confused either
with the English revolution of 1648 or with the French one of 1789.

In 1648 the bourgeoisie was allied with the modern aristocracy
against the monarchy, the feudal aristocracy and the established church.

In 1789 the bourgeoisie was allied with the people against the
monarchy, the aristocracy and the established church.

The model for the revolution of 1789 (at least in Europe) was
only the revolution of 1648; that for the revolution of 1648 only the revolt
of the Netherlands against Spain. [128] Both revolutions were a century
ahead of their model not only in time but also in substance.

In both revolutions the bourgeoisie was the class that really
headed the movement. The proletariat and the non-bourgeois strata of the
middle class had either not yet evolved interests which were different
from those of the bourgeoisie or they did not yet constitute independent
classes or class divisions. Therefore, where they opposed the bourgeoisie,
as they did in France in 1793 and 1794, they fought only for the attainment
of the aims of the bourgeoisie, albeit in a non-bourgeois manner. The entire
French terrorism was just a plebeian way of dealing with the enemies of
the bourgeoisie, absolutism, feudalism and philistinism.

The revolutions of 1648 and 1789 were not English and French revolutions,
they were revolutions in the European fashion. They did not represent the
victory of a particular social class over the old political system; they
proclaimed the political system of the new European society. The bourgeoisie
was victorious in these revolutions, but the victory of the bourgeoisie
was at that time the victory of a new social order, the victory of bourgeois
ownership over feudal ownership, of nationality over provincialism, of
competition over the guild, of partitioning [of the land] over primogeniture,
of the rule of the landowner over the domination of the owner by the land,
of enlightenment over superstition, of the family over the family name,
of industry over heroic idleness, of bourgeois law over medieval privileges.
The revolution of 1648 was the victory of the seventeenth century over
the sixteenth century; the revolution of 1789 was the victory of the eighteenth
century over the seventeenth. These revolutions reflected the needs of
the world at that time rather than the needs of those parts of the world
where they occurred, that is, England and France.

There has been nothing of this in the Prussian March revolution.

The February revolution actually abolished the constitutional
monarchy and nominally abolished the rule of the bourgeoisie. The Prussian
March revolution ought to have nominally established a constitutional monarchy
and actually established the rule of the bourgeoisie. Far from being a
European revolution it was merely a weak repercussion of a European revolution
in a backward country. Instead of being ahead of its century, it was over
half a century behind its time. From the very outset it was a secondary
phenomenon, and it is well known that secondary diseases are harder to
cure and are liable to cause more harm than the primary diseases do. It
was not a question of establishing a new society, but of resurrecting in
Berlin a society that had expired in Paris. The Prussian March revolution
was not even a national, German revolution; from the very start it was
a Provincial Prussian revolution. In Vienna, Cassel, Munich and various
other towns provincial uprisings took place alongside it and competed with
it.

Whereas 1648 and 1789 gained boundless self-confidence from the
knowledge that they were leading the universe, it was the ambition of the
Berlin (revolution) of 1848 to constitute an anachronism. Its light is
like that of the stars which reaches us, the inhabitants of the Earth,
only after the bodies from which it had emanated have been extinct for
a hundred thousand years. The March revolution in Prussia was, on a small
scale – just as it did everything on a small scale – such a star for
Europe. Its light was that of a social body which had long since disintegrated.

The German bourgeoisie developed so sluggishly, timidly and slowly
that at the moment when it menacingly confronted feudalism and absolutism,
it saw menacingly pitted against itself the proletariat and all sections
of the middle class whose interests and ideas were related to those of
the proletariat. The German bourgeoisie found not just one class behind
it, but all Europe hostilely facing it. Unlike the French bourgeoisie of
1789, the Prussian bourgeoisie, when it confronted monarchy and aristocracy,
the representatives of the old society, was not a class speaking for the
whole of modern society. It had been reduced to a kind of estate as clearly
distinct from the Crown as it was from the people, with a strong bend to
oppose both adversaries and irresolute towards each of them individually
because it always saw both of them either in front of it or behind it.
From the first it was inclined to betray the people and to compromise with
the crowned representatives of the old society, for it already belonged
itself to the old society; it did not advance the interests of a new society
against an old one, but represented refurbished interests within an obsolete
society. It stood at the helm of the revolution not because it had the
people behind it but because the people drove it forward; it stood at the
head because it merely represented the spleen of an old social era and
not the initiatives of a new one. A stratum of the old state that had failed
to break through and was thrown up on the surface of the new state by the
force of an earthquake; without faith in itself, without faith in the people,
grumbling at those above, frightened of those below, egoistical towards
both and aware of its egoism; revolutionary with regard to the conservatives
and conservative with regard to the revolutionaries. It did not trust its
own slogans, used phrases instead of ideas, it was intimidated by the world
storm and exploited it for its own ends; it displayed no energy anywhere,
but resorted to plagiarism everywhere, it was vulgar because unoriginal,
and original in its vulgarity; haggling over its own demands, without initiative,
without faith in itself, without faith in the people, without a historic
mission, an abominable dotard finding himself condemned to lead and to
mislead the first youthful impulses of a virile people so as to make them
serve his own senile interests – sans eyes, sans ears, sans teeth, sans everything
– this was the Prussian bourgeoisie which found itself at the helm of
the Prussian state after the March revolution.

Cologne, December 15. The theory of agreement, which the bourgeoisie,
on attaining power in the person of the Camphausen cabinet, immediately
publicized as the "broadest" basis of the Prussian contrat social, was
by no means an empty theory; on the contrary, it grew on the tree of "golden"
life.

The sovereign by the grace of God was by no means vanquished by
the sovereignty of the people as a result of the March revolution. The
Crown, the absolute state, was merely compelled to come to an agreement
with the bourgeoisie, its old rival.

The Crown offers the aristocracy as a sacrifice to the bourgeoisie,
the bourgeoisie offers the people as a sacrifice to the Crown. Under these
circumstances the monarchy becomes bourgeois and the bourgeoisie monarchical.

Only these two powers exist since the March revolution. They use
each other as a sort of lightning-conductor against the revolution. Always,
of course, on the "broadest democratic basis".

Herein lay the secret of the theory of agreement.

The oil and wool merchants [129] who formed the first cabinet
after the March revolution took pleasure in protecting the exposed Crown
with their plebeian wings. They were highly delighted at having gained
access to the Court and reluctantly driven by pure magnanimity to abandon
their austere Roman pose, i.e., the Roman pose of the United Provincial
Diet, to use the corpse of their former popularity to fill the chasm that
threatened to engulf the throne. Camphausen plumed himself on being the
midwife of the constitutional throne. The worthy man was evidently deeply
moved by his own action, his own magnanimity. The Crown and its followers
reluctantly suffered this humiliating protection and made bonne mine d
mauvais jeu, hoping for better days to come.

The bourgeois gentilhomme was easily taken in by a few honeyed
words and curtsies from the partly disintegrated army, the bureaucracy
that trembled for its positions and salaries, and the humiliated feudals,
whose leader was engaged in a constitutional educational journey.

The Prussian bourgeoisie was nominally in control and did not
for a moment doubt that the powers of the old state had placed themselves
unreservedly at its disposal and had become offshoots of its own omnipotence.

Not only in the cabinet but throughout the monarchy the bourgeoisie
was intoxicated with this delusion.

Did not the army, the bureaucracy and even the feudal lords act
as willing and obedient accomplices in the only heroic deeds the Prussian
bourgeoisie performed after the March revolution, namely, the often sanguinary
machinations of the Civil Guard against the unarmed proletariat? Did not
the subdued district governors and penitent major-generals listen with
admiration to the stern patriarchal admonitions which the local councilors
addressed to the people-the only efforts, the only heroic deeds of which
these local councilors, the local representatives of the bourgeoisie (whose
obtrusive servile vulgarity the Windischgratzes, Jellachiches and Weldens
afterwards repaid with kicks), were capable after the March revolution?
Could the Prussian bourgeoisie have doubted after this that the former
ill-will of the army, bureaucracy and feudal aristocracy had been transformed
into respectful loyalty to the bourgeoisie, the magnanimous victor who
had put a curb both upon itself and upon anarchy?

Clearly the Prussian bourgeoisie now had only one duty -- to settle
itself comfortably in power, get rid of the troublesome anarchists, restore
"law and older" and retrieve the profit lost during the storms of March.
It was now merely a question of reducing to a minimum the costs of its
rule and of the March revolution which had brought it about. The weapons
which, in its struggle against the feudal society and the Crown, the Prussian
bourgeoisie had been compelled to demand in the name of the people, such
as the right of association and freedom of the press, were they not bound
to be broken in the hands of a deluded people who no longer needed to use
them to fight for the bourgeoisie and who revealed an alarming inclination
to use them against the bourgeoisie?

The bourgeoisie was convinced that evidently only one obstacle
stood in the way of its agreement with the Crown, in the way of a deal
with the old state, which was resigned to its fate, and that obstacle was
the people -- puer robustus sed malitiosus, [13O] as Hobbes says. The people
and the revolution!

The revolution was the legal title of the people; the vehement
claims of the people were based on the revolution. The revolution was the
bill drawn by the people on the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie came to power
through the revolution. The day it came to power was also the day this
bill became due. The bourgeoisie had to protest the bill.

Revolution in the mouth of the people meant: you, the bourgeois,
are the Comite du salut public, the Committee of Public Safety, to whom
we have entrusted the government in order that you should defend our interests,
the interests of the people, in face of the Crown, but not in order that
you should come to an agreement with the Crown regarding your own interests.

Revolution was the people's protest against an arrangement between
the bourgeoisie and the Crown. The bourgeoisie that was making arrangements
with the Crown had therefore to protest against the revolution.

And that was done under the great Camphausen. The March revolution
was not recognized. The National Representatives at Berlin set themselves
up as representatives of the Prussian bourgeoisie, as the Assembly of conciliators,
by rejecting the motion recognizing the March revolution.

The Assembly sought to undo what had been done. It vociferously
declared to the Prussian people that the people did not come to an agreement
with the bourgeoisie in order to make a revolution against the Crown, but
that the purpose of the revolution was to achieve an agreement between
the Crown and the bourgeoisie against the people! Thus was the legal title
of the revolutionary people annulled and a legal basis secured for the
conservative bourgeoisie.

The legal basis!

Bruggemann, and through him the Kolnische Zeitung, have prated,
fabled and moaned so much about the "legal basis", have so often lost and
recovered, punctured and mended that "legal basis", tossed it from Berlin
to Frankfurt and from Frankfurt to Berlin, narrowed and widened it, turned
the simple basis into an inlaid floor and the inlaid floor into a false
bottom (which, as we know, is the principal device of performing conjurers),
and the false bottom into a bottomless trapdoor, so that in the end the
legal basis has turned for our readers into the basis of the Kolnische
Zeitung; thus, they could confuse the shibboleth of the Prussian bourgeoisie
with the private shibboleth of Herr Joseph Dumont, a necessary invention
of the Prussian world history with the arbitrary hobby-horse of the Kolnische
Zeitung, and regard the legal basis simply as the basis on which the Kolnische
Zeitung arises.

The legal basis, namely, the Prussian legal basis!

The legal basis on which Camphausen, the knight of the great debate,
the resurrected phantom of the United Provincial Diet and the Assembly
of conciliators, moved after the March revolution -- is it the constitutional
law of 1815 [131] or the law of 1820 regarding the Provincial Diet, [132]
or the edict of 1847, [133] or the electoral and agreement law of April
8, 1848. [134]

It is none of these.

"Legal basis" simply meant that the revolution failed to gain
firm ground and the old society did not lose its ground; that the March
revolution was an "occurrence" that acted merely as a "stimulus" towards
an "agreement" between the throne and the bourgeoisie, preparations for
which had long been made within the old Prussian state, and the need for
which the Crown itself had expressed in its royal decrees, but had not,
prior to March, considered as "urgent". In short, the "legal basis" meant
that after the March revolution the bourgeoisie wanted to negotiate with
the Crown on the same footing as before the March events, as though no
revolution had taken place and the United Provincial Diet had achieved
its goal without a revolution. The "legal basis" meant that the revolution,
the legal title of the people, was to be ignored in the contrat social
between the government and the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie deduced its
claims from the old Prussian legislation, in order that the people should
not deduce any claims from the new Prussian revolution.

Naturally, the ideological cretins of the bourgeoisie, its journalists,
and such like, had to pass off this palliative of the bourgeois interests
as the real interests of the bourgeoisie, and persuade themselves and others
to believe this. The phrase about the legal basis acquired real substance
in the mind of a Bruggemann.

The Camphausen government fulfilled its task, the task of being
an intermediate link and a transitional stage. It was the intermediate
link between the bourgeoisie, which had risen on the shoulders of the people
and the bourgeoisie which no longer required the shoulders of the people;
between the bourgeoisie which apparently represented the people in face
of the Crown and the bourgeoisie which really represented the Crown in
face of the people; between the bourgeoisie emerging from the revolution
and the bourgeoisie which had emerged as the core of the revolution.

In keeping with its role, the Camphausen government coyly and
bashfully confined itself to passive resistance against the revolution.

Although it rejected the revolution in theory, in practice it
resisted only its encroachments and tolerated only the re-establishment
of the old political authorities.

The bourgeoisie in the meantime believed that it had reached the
point where passive resistance had to turn into open attack. The Camphausen
cabinet resigned not because it had committed some blunder or other, but
simply because it was the first cabinet following the March revolution,
because it was the cabinet of the March revolution and by virtue of its
origin it had to conceal that it represented the bourgeoisie under the
guise of a dictatorship of the people. Its dubious beginnings and its ambiguous
character still imposed on it certain conventions, restraints and considerations
with regard to the sovereign people which were irksome to the bourgeoisie,
and which a second cabinet originating directly from the Assembly of conciliators
would no longer have to reckon with.

Its resignation therefore puzzled the arm-chair politicians. It
was followed by the Hansemann government, the government of action, as
the bourgeoisie intended to proceed from the period when it passively betrayed
the people to the Crown to the period of active subjugation of the people
to its own rule in agreement with the Crown. The government of action was
the second government after the March revolution; that was its whole secret.

Cologne, December 29.

"Gentlemen, business is business!" [135]

In these few words Hansemann epitomized the whole liberalism of the United
Provincial Diet. This man was bound to become the head of a government
based on the Assembly of conciliators, a government which was to turn passive
resistance to the people into an active attack on the people, the government
of action.

No Prussian government contained so many middle-class names. Hansemann,
Milde, Murker, Kuhlwetter, Gierke! Even von Auerswald, the label presentable
at Court, belonged to the liberal aristocracy of the Konigsberg opposition
which paid homage to the bourgeoisie. Roth von Schreckenstein alone represented
the old bureaucratic Prussian feudal nobility among this rabble. Roth von
Schreckenstein! The surviving title of a vanished novel about robbers and
knights by the late Hildebrandt. [136] But Roth von Schreckenstein was
merely the feudal setting for the bourgeois jewel. Roth von Schreckenstein
in a middle-class government meant this, spelled out in capital letters:
the Prussian feudalists, the army and bureaucracy are guided by the newly
arisen star, the Prussian middle class. These powerful figures have placed
themselves at its disposal, and the middle class has set them up in front
of its throne, just as bears were placed in front of the rulers of the
people on old heraldic emblems. Roth von Schreckenstein is merely intended
to be the bear of the middle-class government.

On June 26 the Hansemann government presented itself to the National
Assembly. Its actual existence began in July. The June revolution was the
background of the government of action, just as the February revolution
formed the background of the government of mediation.

The bloody victory of the Paris bourgeoisie over the proletarians
of Paris was used against the people by the Prussian bourgeoisie, just
as the bloody victory of the Croats at Vienna was used against the bourgeoisie
by the Prussian Crown. The suffering of the Prussian bourgeoisie after
the Austrian November was retribution for the suffering of the Prussian
people after the French June. In their short- sighted narrow-mindedness
the German philistines mistook themselves for the French bourgeoisie. They
had overturned no throne, they had not abolished feudal society, still
less its last vestiges, they did not have to uphold a society they themselves
had created. After the June events, as after those of February, they believed,
as they had since the beginning of the sixteenth century-and during the
eighteenth century, that they would be able in their traditional crafty
money-making manner to pocket three-quarters of the profit produced by
someone else's labor. They had no inkling of the fact that behind the French
June lurked the Austrian November and behind the Austrian November, the
Prussian December. They did not suspect that whereas in France the throne-shattering
bourgeoisie was confronted by only one enemy, the proletariat, the Prussian
bourgeoisie, grappling with the Crown, possessed only one ally -- the people.
Not because these two groups have no hostile and contradictory interests,
but because they are still welded together by the same interests in face
of a third power which oppresses them both equally.

The Hansemann government regarded itself as a government of the
June revolution. In contrast to the "red robbers", the philistines in every
Prussian town turned into "respectable republicans", without ceasing to
be worthy royalists, and occasionally overlooking the fact that the "reds"
wore white-and-black cockades. [137]

In his speech from the throne on June 26, Hansemann gave short
shrift to Camphausen's mysteriously nebulous monarchy on the broadest democratic
basis".

"Constitutional monarchy based on the two-chamber system and the
joint exercise of legislative power by the two chambers and the Crown"
-- that was the dry formula to which he reduced the portentous motto of
his enthusiastic predecessor.

"Modification of the most essential conditions that are incompatible
with the new constitution, liberation of property from the fetters that
hamper its most advantageous utilization in a large part of the monarchy,
reorganization of the administration of justice, reform of fiscal legislation
and particularly annulment of tax exemptions, etc." and above all "strengthening
of the state which is necessary for safeguarding the freedom which has
been won" (by the citizens) "against reaction" (i.e., using the freedom
in the interests of the feudal aristocracy) "and anarchy" (i.e., using
the freedom in the interests of the people) "and for restoring the shaken
trust"

-- such was the government's programme, the programme of the Prussian bourgeoisie
in office, whose classical representative is Hansemann.

In the United Provincial Diet Hansemann was the most bitter and
the most cynical adversary of trust, for-"gentlemen, business is. business!"
Hansemann in office proclaimed the "restoration of the shaken trust" a
foremost necessity, for -- this time he addressed the people as previously
he had addressed the throne -- for

"Gentlemen, business is business!"

Previously it was a question of the trust that gives money, this time it
was of the trust that makes money; then it was a matter of feudal trust,
the sincere trust in God, King and Country, now it was bourgeois trust,
trust in trade and commerce, in interest-bearing capital, in the solvency
of one's commercial friends, that is, commercial trust; it is not a matter
of faith, love or hope, but of credit.

Hansemann's words: "restoration of the shaken trust", expressed
the fixed idea of the Prussian bourgeoisie.

Credit depends on the confidence that the exploitation of wage
labor by capital, of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie, of the petty bourgeois
by the big bourgeois, will continue in the traditional manner. Hence any
political move of the proletariat, whatever its nature, unless it takes
place under the direct command of the bourgeoisie, shakes this trust, impairs
credit. "Restoration of the shaken trust" when uttered by Hansemann signifies:

Suppression of every political move of the proletariat and of
all social strata whose interests do not completely coincide with the interests
of the class which believes itself to be standing at the helm of state.

Hansemann accordingly placed the "strengthening of the state"
side by side with the "restoration of the shaken trust". But he mistook
the character of this "state". He sought to strengthen the state which
served credit and bourgeois trust, but he strengthened the state which
demands trust and if necessary extorts this trust with the help of grape-shot,
because it has no credit. He wanted to economize on the costs of bourgeois
rule but has instead burdened the bourgeoisie with the exorbitant millions
which the restoration of Prussian feudal rule costs.

He told the workers quite laconically that he had an excellent
remedy for them. But before he could produce it the "shaken trust" must
first of all be restored. To restore this trust the working class had to
give up all political activity and interference in the business of state
and revert to its former habits. If it followed his advice and trust were
restored, this mysterious potent remedy would prove effective if only because
it would no longer be required or applicable, since in this case the malady
itself-the upset of bourgeois law and order-would have been eliminated.
And what need is there of a medicine when there is no malady? But if the
people obstinately stuck to their purpose, very well, then he would "strengthen
the state", the police, the army, the courts, the bureaucracy, and would
set his bears on them, for "trust" had become a "business question", and:

"Gentlemen, business is business!"

Hansemann's programme, even though he may smile about it, was an honest
programme, a well-intentioned programme.

He wanted to strengthen the power of the state not only against
anarchy, that is, against the people, he wanted to strengthen it also against
reaction, that is, against the Crown and feudal interests in case they
attempted to assert themselves against the bourgeoisie's purse and their
"most essential", that is, their most modest, political claims.

The very composition of the government of action expressed a protest
against this "reaction".

It differed from all previous Prussian cabinets in that its real
Prime Minister was the Minister of Finance. For centuries the Prussian
state had carefully concealed the fact that the departments of war, internal
and foreign affairs, church and educational matters and even the treasury
of the royal household as well as faith, hope and charity depended on profane
financial matters. The government of action placed this tiresome bourgeois
truth uppermost by placing Herr Hansemann at its head, a man whose ministerial
programme like his opposition programme may be summarized in the words:

"Gentlemen, business is business!"

The monarchy in Prussia became a "money affair".

Now let us pass on from the programme of the government of action
to its actions.

It really carried out its threat of "strengthening the state"
against "anarchy", that is, against the working class and all sections
of the middle class who did not stick to the programme of Herr Hansemann.
It can even be said that, apart from increasing the tax on beet-sugar and
spirits, this reaction against so- called anarchy, i.e., against the revolutionary
movement, was the only serious action of this government- of action.

Numerous lawsuits against the press based on Prussian law or,
where it did not exist, on the Code penal, [138] numerous arrests on the
same "sufficient grounds" (Auerswald's formula), introduction of a system
of constables in Berlin [139] at the rate of one constable per every two
houses, police interference with the freedom of association, the use of
soldiers against unruly citizens and of the Civil Guard against unruly
workers, and the introduction, by way of deterrent, of martial law -- all
these events of Hansemann's Olympiad are still vividly remembered. No details
need be mentioned.

This aspect of the efforts of the government of action was summarized
by Kuhlwetter in the following words:

"A state that wants to be really free must have a really large police
force as its executive arm",

to which Hansemann muttered one of his usual remarks:

"This would also greatly help to restore trust and revive the rather
slack commercial activity."

The government of action accordingly "strengthened" the old Prussian police
force, the judiciary, the bureaucracy and the army, who, since they receive
their pay from the bourgeoisie, also serve the bourgeoisie, as Hansemann
thought. At any rate, they were "strengthened".

On the other hand, the temper of the proletariat and bourgeois
democrats is expressed by one event. Because a few reactionaries maltreated
a few democrats in Charlottenburg, the people stormed the residence of
the Prime Minister in Berlin. So popular had the government of action become.
The next day Hansemann tabled a law against riotous gatherings and public
meetings. This shows how cunningly he intrigued against reaction.

Thus the actual, tangible, popular activity of the government
of action was purely policemanic in character. In the eyes of the proletariat
and the urban democrats this cabinet and the Assembly of conciliators,
whose majority was represented in the cabinet, and the Prussian bourgeoisie,
the majority of whom constituted the majority in the Assembly of conciliation,
represented the old, refurbished police and bureaucratic state. To this
was added resentment against the bourgeoisie, because it governed and had
set up the Civil Guard as an integral part of the police.

The "achievement of the March events", as the people saw it, was
that the liberal gentlemen of the bourgeoisie, too, took police duties
upon themselves. There was thus a twin police force.

Not the actions of the government of action, but the drafts of
its organic laws show clearly that it "strengthened" the "police"-the ultimate
expression of the old state-and spurred it into action only in the interest
of the bourgeoisie.

In the bills relating to local government, jury, and Civil Guard,
introduced by the Hansemann cabinet, property in one form or another always
forms the demarcation line between lawful and unlawful territory. All these
bills contain the most servile concessions to royal power, for the bourgeois
cabinet believed that the wings of royalty had been clipped and that it
had become its ally; but as a consolation the ascendancy of capital over
labor is all the more ruthlessly emphasized.

The Civil Guard Law approved by the Assembly of conciliation was
turned against the bourgeoisie and had to provide a legal pretext for disarming
it. According to the fancy of its authors, however, it was to become valid
only after the promulgation of the Law on Local Government and of the constitution,
that is, after the consolidation of the rule of the bourgeoisie. The experience
which the Prussian bourgeoisie gained in connection with the Civil Guard
Law may contribute to its enlightenment and show it that for the time being
all its actions that are meant to be directed against the people are only
directed against itself.

As far as the people are concerned, the Hansemann ministry is
in practice epitomized by the old Prussian policeman, and in theory by
the offensive Belgian differentiation [140] between bourgeois and non-bourgeois.

Now let us pass on to another section of the ministerial programme,
to anarchy against reaction.

In this respect the ministry can boast more pious wishes than
real deeds.

Among the pious bourgeois wishes are the partition and sale of
demesnes to private owners, the abandonment of banking to free competition,
the conversion of the Seehandlung [141] into a private institution, etc.

It was unfortunate for the government of action that all its economic
attacks against the feudal party took place under the aegis of a forced
loan, and that in general its attempts at reformation were seen by the
people merely as financial expedients devised to replenish the treasury
of the strengthened "state". Hansemann thus won the hatred of one party
without winning the approval of the other. And it has to be admitted that
he only ventured to attack feudal privileges when money matters closest
to the Minister of Finance, when money matters as understood by the Ministry
of Finance, became pressing. In this narrow sense he told the feudal lords:

"Gentlemen, business is business!"

Thus even his positive middle-class efforts directed against the feudalists
reveal the same police taint as his negative measures designed to "revive
commercial activity". For in the language of political economy the police
is called exchequer. The increase in the beet-sugar and liquor duties which
Hansemann passed through the National Assembly roused the indignation of
the money-bags standing with God for King and Country in Silesia, Brandenburg,
Saxony, East and West Prussia, etc. But while this measure angered the
industrial landowners in the old Prussian provinces, it caused no less
displeasure among the middle-class distillers in the Rhine Province, who
perceived that their conditions of competition compared with those of the
old Prussian provinces had become even more unfavorable. And to crown all,
it angered the workers in the old provinces, for whom it simply meant,
and could only mean, a rise in the price of a prime necessity. This measure
therefore merely amounted to replenishing the treasury of the "strengthened
state". This example suffices, since it is the only action against the
feudalists actually taken by the government of action, the only bill of
this nature which really became law.

Hansemann's "bills" abrogating all exemptions from graduated and
land taxes, [142] and his projected income-tax caused the landowning votaries
of "God, King and Country" to rave as if stung by the tarantula. They denounced
him as a communist and even today the Prussian Knight of the Cross crosses itself three times at the
mention of Hansemann's name. That name sounds like Fra Diavolo [143] to
it. The repeal of all exemptions from the land-tax, the only important
measure to be introduced by a Prussian minister during the glorious reign
of the Assembly of conciliators, failed because of the principled narrow-mindedness
of the Left. Hansemann himself had justified this narrow-mindedness. Was
the Left to provide new financial resources for the cabinet of the "strengthened
state" before the completion and promulgation of the constitution?

The bourgeois cabinet par excellence was so unlucky that its most
radical measure had to be frustrated by the radical members of the Assembly
of conciliators. It was so barren that its whole crusade against feudalism
merely resulted in a tax increase, which was equally odious to all classes,
and its entire financial acumen brought forth a forced loan: two measures,
which ultimately only provided subsidies for the campaign of the counter-revolution
against the bourgeoisie. But the feudal aristocrats were convinced of the
"nefarious" intentions of the bourgeois cabinet. Thus even the financial
struggle of the Prussian bourgeoisie against feudalism merely proved that
owing to its unpopularity and impotence it was softly able to collect money
against itself and-gentlemen, business is business!

Just as the bourgeois cabinet succeeded in equally offending the
urban proletariat, the middle-class democrats and the feudal nobility,
so did it manage to alienate and antagonize even the peasants oppressed
by feudalism, and in this it was eagerly supported by the Assembly of conciliators.
It has to be remembered after all that during half of its existence the
Assembly was appropriately represented by the Hansemann cabinet and that
the bourgeois martyrs of today were yesterday the train-bearers of Hansemann.

During Hansemann's rule Patio introduced a bill abolishing feudal
obligations (see the criticism of it we published earlier). It was a most
wretched concoction of the helpless bourgeois desire to abolish feudal
privileges, those "conditions that are incompatible with the new constitution",
and of bourgeois fear of revolutionarily infringing on any kind of property
whatever. Wretched, timid and narrow-minded egoism blinded the Prussian
bourgeoisie to such an extent that it repulsed the peasantry, its most
needed ally.

On June 3 deputy Hanow moved

"that all pending proceedings which concern landowner-peasant relations
and the commutation of services be immediately discontinued at the request
of one of the sides until the promulgation of a new law based on just principles."

Not until the end of September, that is, four months later, under the Pfuel
cabinet, did the Assembly of conciliation pass a bill designed to discontinue
pending proceedings between landowners and peasants, after rejecting all
liberal amendments and retaining the "reservation about the provisional
establishment of current obligations" and the "collection of dues and arrears
in dispute".

In August, if we are not mistaken, the Assembly of conciliators
declared that Nenstiel's motion that "labor services be abolished immediately"
was not urgent. Could the peasants be expected to consider it an urgent
matter for them to take up the cudgels for this Assembly of conciliators,
which had thrown them back into conditions worse than those they had actually
won after the March events?

The French bourgeoisie began by emancipating the peasants. Together
with the peasants it conquered Europe. The Prussian bourgeoisie was so
preoccupied with its most narrow, immediate interests that it foolishly
lost even this ally and turned it into a tool of the feudal counter-revolutionaries.

The official history of the dissolution of the middle-class cabinet
is well known.

Under its protective arm, the "state" was "strengthened" to such
an extent and the popular energy so weakened that even on July 15 the Dioscuri
Kuhlwetter and Hansemann were obliged to send a warning against reactionary
machinations of civil servants, and especially chiefs of rural districts,
to all district governors in the monarchy; that later an "Assembly of the
nobility and big landowners for the protection" of their privileges [144]
met in Berlin alongside the Assembly of conciliators; and that finally,
in opposition to the so-called Berlin National Assembly, a "diet of local
communities for the protection of the threatened property rights of landlords",
a body originating in the Middle Ages, was convoked in Upper Lusatia on
September 4.

The energy expended by the government and the so-called National
Assembly against these increasingly menacing counter-revolutionary symptoms
found adequate expression in paper admonitions. The bourgeois cabinet reserved
bayonets, bullets, prisons and constables exclusively for the people "so
as to restore the shaken trust and revive commercial activity".

The incidents at Schweidnitz, [145] where the troops in fact murdered
the bourgeoisie in the person of the Civil Guard, finally roused the National
Assembly from its apathy. On August 9 it braced itself for a heroic deed,
that of the Stein-Schultze army order, [146] whose most drastic measure
of coercion was an appeal to the tact of the Prussian officers. A measure
of coercion indeed! Did not royalist honor forbid the officers to follow
the dictates of bourgeois honor?

On September 7, a month after the Assembly of conciliators had
passed the Stein-Schultze army order, it once more decided that its resolution
was a real resolution and should be carried out by the ministers. Hansemann
refused to do this and resigned on September 11, after having appointed
himself a bank director at a yearly salary of 6,000 thaler, for -- gentlemen,
business is business!

Finally, on September 25, the Assembly of conciliators gratefully
agreed to Pfuel's thoroughly watered- down formula of acceptance of the
Stein-Schultze army order, which by that time-Wrangel's parallel army order
[147] and the large number of troops concentrated around Berlin had turned
into a bad joke.

A mere glance at these dates and the history of the Stein-Schultze
army order suffices to show that the army order was not the real reason
for Hansemann's resignation. Is it likely that Hansemann, who did not shy
at recognizing the revolution, should have shied at this paper proclamation?
Are we to believe that Hansemann, who, whenever the portfolio slipped from
his fingers, always picked it up again, has this time, in a fit of virtuous
exasperation, left it on the ministerial benches to be hawked about? No,
our Hansemann is no fanatic. Hansemann was simply deceived, just as in
general he was the representative of the deceived bourgeoisie. He was given
to understand that on no account would he be dropped by the Crown. He was
made to lose his last semblance of popularity in order that the Crown should
at last be able to sacrifice him to the malice of the country squires and
get rid of this middle-class tutelage. Moreover, the plan of campaign agreed
upon with Russia and Austria required that the cabinet should be headed
by a general appointed by the camarilla from outside the Assembly of conciliators.
The old "state" had been sufficiently "strengthened" under the bourgeois
cabinet to venture on this coup.

Pfuel was a mistake. The victory of the Croats at Vienna made
even a Brandenburg a useful tool.

Under the Brandenburg cabinet the Assembly of conciliators was
ignominiously dispersed, fooled, derided, humiliated and hunted, and the
people, at the decisive moment, remained indifferent. The defeat of the
Assembly was the defeat of the Prussian bourgeoisie, of the constitutionalists,
hence a victory for the democratic party, however dear it had to pay for
that victory.

And the imposed constitution?

It had once been said that never would a "piece of paper" be allowed
to come between the King and his people. [148] Now it is said, there shall
only be a piece of paper between the King and his people. The real constitution
of Prussia is the state of siege. The imposed French constitution had only
one article -- the 14th, which invalidated it. [149] Every article of the
imposed Prussian constitution is an article 14.

By means of this constitution the Crown imposes new privileges-that
is, upon itself.

It permits itself to dissolve the Chambers indefinitely. It permits
ministers in the interim to issue any desired law (even those affecting
property and so forth). It permits deputies to impeach ministers for such
actions, but at the risk, under martial law, of being classed as "internal
enemies". Finally, it permits itself, should the stock of the counter-revolution
go up in the spring, to replace this nebulous "piece of paper" by a Christian-Germanic
Magna Charta organically growing out of the distinctions of the medieval
estates, or to drop the constitutional game altogether. Even in this case
the conservative bourgeois would fold their hands and pray:

"The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name
of the Lord!"

The history of the Prussian middle class, and that of the German
middle class in general between March and December shows that a purely
middle-class revolution and the establishment of bourgeois rule in the
form of a constitutional monarchy is impossible in Germany, and that the
only alternatives are either a feudal absolutist counter-revolution or
a social republican revolution.

The viable section of the bourgeoisie is bound to awake again
from its apathy -- this is guaranteed above all by the staggering bill
which the counter-revolution will present it with in the spring and, as
our Hansemann so thoughtfully says:

Gentlemen, business is business!