Montesquieu L VI.
Cologne, January 20. The “honourable” Joseph Dumont has an anonymous writer—who
Neue Rheinische Zeitung,
No. 201, January 21, 1849
is not paid by him but rather pays him—who, below the line, edits the “Primary Voters,”
address the following apostrophe to the *Neue Rheinische Zeitung*:

“It has pleased the ‘*Neue Rheinische Zeitung*’, the organ of democracy, to take notice of the articles published in this paper under the title ‘To the Primary Voters’ and to describe them as borrowed from the ‘*Neue Preußische Zeitung*’.
In the face of this lie, we simply declare that these articles are paid for as advertisements, that they are written in Cologne, with the exception of the first, which is taken from the parliamentary correspondence, and that their author has not even seen the ‘*Neue Preußische Zeitung*’ to date, let alone read it.”

We grasp what importance it has for Montesquieu LVI to affirm his property. We grasp just as much how important it is for Herr Dumont to declare that he is “paid,” even for the leaflets and advertisements that he has set, printed and distributed in the interest of his own class, the bourgeoisie.

As for the anonymous writer, he is familiar with the French proverb: “*les beaux esprits se rencontrent.*” It is not his fault if his innermost intellectual products resemble those of the “*Neue Preußische Zeitung*” and the “Prussian associations” like one egg another to the point of confusion.

We have never read his advertisements in the “*Kölnische Zeitung*,” but have merely cast a fleeting glance at the leaflets coming from Dumont’s printing press, which were sent to us from left and right; but we now find by comparison that the same screeds serve simultaneously as advertisements and leaflets.

Karl Marx

To atone for our offence against the anonymous Montesquieu LVI, we have imposed upon ourselves the harsh penance of reading through all his advertisements in the “*Kölnische Zeitung*” and exposing his intellectual private property as “common property” to the German public. Here is wisdom!

Montesquieu LVI concerns himself principally with the social question. He has found the “easiest, simplest way” to its solution and extols his Morrison’s pill with the most unctuous, naively shameless quack-doctor pathos:

“The easiest, simplest way to this (namely, to the solution of the social question) is, however: to accept the constitution octroyed on 5 December of the *p r e v i o u s  y e a r*, to revise it, then to have it sworn to from all sides, and thus to establish it. That is the only path that leads us to salvation. … He, therefore, who bears a heart in his bosom for the distress of his poor brothers, who wants to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, who, in a word, wants to solve the social question—let him elect no one who declares himself against the constitution.” (Montesquieu LVI.)

Vote for Brandenburg-Manteuffel-Ladenberg, and the social question is solved in the “simplest and easiest way”! Vote for Dumont, Camphausen, Wittgenstein, or also for the *minorum gentium*, such as Compes, Mevissen, and the like—and the social question is solved. The “social question” for one vote! He who “wants to feed the hungry and clothe the naked,” let him vote for Hansemann and Stupp! For every vote, one social question less! The acceptance of the octroyed constitution—*voilà la solution du problème social!*

We do not doubt for a moment that not only Montesquieu LVI, but also his patrons in the citizens’ association will not wait for the acceptance, revision, swearing-in and establishment of the octroyed constitution to “feed the hungry and clothe the naked.” Preparations for this have already been made.

For some weeks, circulars have been flying around here in which the capitalists inform the master artisans, shopkeepers, etc., that, in view of present circumstances and the reawakening of credit, the interest is being raised from 4 to 5 per cent for philanthropic reasons. First solution of the social question!

In the same spirit, the municipal council here has drafted the “workers’ card” for those unfortunates who are starving—or must sell their arms to the city (compare No. 187 of the “*Neue Rheinische Zeitung*”). It will be recalled that in this charter octroyed upon the workers, the worker who has lost his bread is contractually obliged to place himself under police supervision. Second solution of the social question!

Montesquieu L VI.
In Cologne, shortly after the March elections, the municipal council founded a food establishment at cost prices, nicely appointed, with splendid heated rooms, etc. After the granting of the octroyed constitution, this establishment was replaced by another, subordinate to the poor relief administration, where there is no heating, the eating utensils are lacking, it is not permitted to consume the food on the spot, and a quart of a nameless broth is sold for 8 pfennigs. Third solution of the social question!

In Vienna, during their rule, the workers guarded the bank, the houses and the wealth of the bourgeoisie who had run away. On their return, these same bourgeois denounced these “robbers” to Windischgrätz to be hanged. The unemployed who approached the municipal council were put into the army against Hungary. Fourth solution of the social question!

In Breslau, the municipal council and the government calmly threw the wretches who had to seek refuge in the poorhouse into the arms of cholera by depriving them of the most physically indispensable comforts of life, and only took notice of the victims of their cruel charity when the epidemic itself bore down upon them. Fifth solution of the social question!

In the Berlin association “With God for King and Fatherland,” a friend of the octroyed constitution declared it was painful that one still had to pay compliments to the “proletariat” in order to enforce one’s interests and objectives. That [is] the solution of the “solution of the social question.”

“Prussian spies are so dangerous precisely because they are never paid, but always hope to be paid,” says our friend Heine. And the Prussian bourgeoisie are so dangerous precisely because they never pay, but always promise to pay.

The English and French bourgeoisie allow election day to cost them a great deal of money. Their bribery manoeuvres are world-renowned. The Prussian bourgeoisie—“they are the cleverest of folk!”—far too moral and solid to draw their purses, pay with the “solution of the social question.” That costs nothing! Yet Montesquieu LVI, as Dumont officially assures, at least pays the insertion fees to the “*Kölnische Zeitung*” and gives the solution to the “social questions”—gratis to boot.

The practical part of the *petits œuvres* of our Montesquieu thus consists in: Vote for Brandenburg-Manteuffel-Ladenberg! Elect Camphausen-Hansemann! Send us to Berlin, let our people first get established there! That is the solution of the social question!

Karl Marx

The immortal Hansemann has solved these questions. First, the restoration of order, in order to restore credit. Then, as in 1844, when “my dear Silesian weavers were to and had to be helped,” powder and lead to solve the “social question”!
So vote for friends of the octroyed constitution!

But Montesquieu LVI only accepts the octroyed constitution in order to be able to revise it and swear it in afterwards. Dearest Montesquieu! Once you have accepted the constitution, you will only revise it on its own basis, i.e. revise it as far as it pleases the King and the second chamber composed of Krautjunkers, financial barons, high officials and parsons. This only possible revision is, as a precaution, already indicated in the octroyed constitution itself. It consists in abandoning the constitutional system and restoring the old Christian-Germanic estate system.

That is the revision which, after acceptance of the octroyed constitution, is the only possible and only permitted one, a fact that cannot have escaped the astuteness of a Montesquieu.

The practical part of the *petits œuvres* of Montesquieu LVI therefore boils down to: Vote for Hansemann-Camphausen! Vote for Dumont-Stupp! Vote for Brandenburg-Manteuffel! Accept the octroyed constitution! Elect electors who accept the octroyed constitution and all that under the pretext of solving the “social question.”

What the devil do we care about the pretext, once there is the octroyed constitution.

Yet our Montesquieu has, of course, preceded his practical instruction for solving the “social question”—the real point of his colossal work—with a theoretical part. Let us look at this theoretical part.

The profound thinker first explains what the “social questions” actually are. 

“What, then, is the social question really about?
Man ought to and wants to live.
In order to live, man needs shelter, clothing, food.
Nature itself produces neither shelter nor clothing; food grows wild only sparsely and for a long time insufficiently.
Man must therefore procure these means of subsistence for himself.
This is done through labour.
Labour is accordingly the first condition of our life; without labour we cannot live.
Among the earliest nations, every man built his own hut, made his own clothing from animal skins, picked his own fruit to eat. That was the original state.”

Montesquieu L VI.

If, however, man needs nothing but housing, clothing, food, if he, therefore, merely satisfies his physical needs, he stands on the same level as the animal; for the animal does that as well. But man is a higher being than the animal, he needs more in order to live: he needs joy, he is to raise himself to a moral worth. But he can only do this if he lives in society.
But as soon as men lived in society, an entirely different state of affairs arose. They soon noticed that labour was much easier when each individual performed only a specific task. And so one made clothing, the second built houses, the third provided food, and the first gave to the second what the latter lacked. Thus the various estates of men formed quite naturally, as one became a hunter, another a craftsman, a third a tiller of the soil.
But men did not stop there; for mankind must move forward. Inventions were made. Spinning and weaving were invented, the forging of iron, the tanning of animal hides. The more inventions were made, the more diverse became handicrafts, the easier became agriculture, to which handicrafts supplied plough and spade. All helped one another, all worked into each other’s hands. Men then got together with neighbouring peoples; one people had what the other lacked – and the latter possessed what the former did not have. They exchanged these things. Thus trade arose, and with it a new branch of human activity. Thus civilisation advanced from stage to stage; from the first crude inventions, in the course of centuries, men finally arrived at the inventions of our own time.
Thus, among men, the sciences and the arts developed, and life became ever richer, ever more varied. The physician healed the sick, the parson preached, the merchant traded, the peasant tilled the field, the gardener grew flowers, the mason built the houses, which the joiner furnished with household implements, the miller ground the flour that the baker baked into bread – one thing worked into the next; no one could stand alone, no one could procure his needs all by himself.
These are the social relations.
They have arisen quite naturally, of their own accord. And if you make a revolution today which destroys all these relations from the ground up, if you then begin to live anew tomorrow, the relations will form again exactly as they are now. For millennia, it has been the same with all the peoples of the earth. Now, if someone makes a distinction between workers and bourgeoisie – that is a great lie. We all work, each in his own way,

Karl Marx
each according to his powers and abilities. The physician works when he visits the sick, the musician who strikes up for dancing, the merchant who writes his letters, all work, each in his place.
Here is wisdom! He that hath ears to hear, let him hear!
So what, actually, is the matter with the physiological question!
Every physical being presupposes a certain weight, density, etc. Every organic body consists of all sorts of components, each of which performs its own function, and where the reciprocal organs work into each other.
“These are the physiological relations.”
Montesquieu LVI., it cannot be denied, possesses an original talent for the simplification of science. A patent (without government guarantee) for Montesquieu LVI.
Products of labour are produced only by labour. No sowing, no harvest; no spinning, no yarn, etc.
Europe will bow in admiration before the colossal genius who has brought these truths to light in Cologne itself, without any assistance from the “Neue Preußische Zeitung”.
In labour people enter into definite relations with one another. A division of labour takes place, which is more or less varied. One bakes, another forges, one digs, another howls, Montesquieu LVI. writes and Dumont prints. Adam Smith, recognise your master –!
Now these discoveries – that labour and the division of labour are conditions of life for every human society – enable Montesquieu LVI. to conclude that the “various estates” are in accordance with nature, that the distinction between “bourgeoisie and proletariat” is a “great lie”, that the existing “social relations”, even if a “revolution” were to destroy them from the ground up today, will “form again exactly as they are now”, and that, finally, it is absolutely necessary to elect electors in the spirit of Manteuffel and the imposed constitution if one otherwise “bears in one’s bosom a heart for the distress of one’s poor brothers” and wishes to partake of the respect of Montesquieu LVI.
“For millennia, it has been the same with all the peoples of the earth”!!!
In Egypt there was labour and division of labour and castes; in Greece and Rome labour and division of labour – and freemen and slaves; in the Middle Ages labour and division of labour and feudal lords and serfs, guilds, estates, etc. In our own time there is labour and division of labour and classes, of which the one class is in possession of all the instruments of production and means of subsistence, while the other

Montesquieu L VI.
lives only so long as it sells its labour, and sells its labour only so long as the employing class enriches itself by the purchase of this labour.
Is it not, then, as clear as daylight that “it has for millennia been the same with all the peoples of the earth” as it is today in Prussia, because labour and the division of labour have always existed in one form or another? Or does it rather appear the other way round – that social relations, property relations, have been constantly overturned precisely by the ever-changing mode of labour and division of labour?
In the year 1789, the bourgeois did not call out to feudal society: Nobility remain nobility, serf remain serf, guildsman remain guildsman – for without labour and division of labour no society! Without breathing air no life! Breathe in the stifling air, then, and do not open the windows – thus reasons Montesquieu LVI.
It takes the whole naïve, loutish, insolent stupidity of a German Reichspfahlbürger grown grey in brutal ignorance, after he has superficially and crookedly hammered the very first letters of political economy – labour, division of labour – into his sluggish brain matter, to join in with oracular pronouncements on questions on which our century is breaking its teeth.
“Without labour and division of labour, no society!
Therefore
Elect friends of the imposed Prussian constitution and only friends of the imposed constitution as electors.”
This epitaph will one day stand forth in large letters on the walls of the splendid marble mausoleum that a grateful posterity will feel obliged to build for the solver of the social question, Montesquieu LVI. (not to be confused with Henry CCLXXXIV of Reuß-Schleitz-Greitz-Lobenstein-Eberswalde).
Montesquieu LVI. does not hide from us “where the knot lies” and what he intends to do as soon as he is proclaimed legislator.
“For this”, he instructs us, “the state must ensure that everyone receives enough education to be able to learn something decent in the world”.
Montesquieu LVI. has never heard tell that, under existing conditions, the division of labour replaces complex labour with simple labour, replaces adults with children, men with women, the independent worker with automata, that in the same proportion as modern industry develops, the education of the worker becomes superfluous and impossible. We refer the Cologne Montesquieu neither to Saint-Simon nor Fourier, but to Malthus and Ricardo. Let that worthy first acquaint himself with the first rudiments of present conditions before he sets about improving them and – handing out oracles.
“For people impoverished by illness, by old age, the commune must provide.”
And if the commune itself becomes impoverished, which cannot fail to happen with the 100 million in taxes imposed simultaneously with the new constitution and the epidemic states of siege, what then, Montesquieu?
“Where new inventions or commercial crises destroy whole branches of industry, the state must come to the rescue and provide remedy.”
Unfamiliar as the Cologne Montesquieu is with the things of this world, it can scarcely have escaped him that the “new inventions” and the commercial crises are as permanent as the Prussian ministerial edicts and legal quibbles. In Germany, in particular, new inventions are only introduced when competition with foreign peoples makes their introduction a matter of life and death, and the newly rising branches of industry are supposed to ruin themselves in order to come to the aid of those that are declining! The branches of industry that newly arise through inventions arise precisely because they produce more cheaply than the declining ones. Where the devil would be the advantage if they had to feed the declining ones? But the state, the government, notoriously only gives the appearance of giving. It must first be given, so that it may give. But who is to give to it, Montesquieu LVI.? The declining branch of industry, so that it declines even faster? Or the rising one, so that it withers even as it rises? Or the branches of industry untouched by the new inventions, so that they go bankrupt through the invention of a new tax? Ponder this thoroughly, Montesquieu LVI.!
And what about commercial crises, my dear sir? When a European commercial crisis breaks out, the Prussian state can think of nothing more anxiously than how to squeeze the last drops of water out of its accustomed tax sources by distraint and the like. The poor Prussian state! In order for the Prussian state to render commercial crises harmless, it would have to possess, in addition to the national labour, a third source of revenue in the clouds. True, if money could be conjured out of the ground by Most High New Year’s wishes, Wrangel’s army orders or Manteuffel’s ministerial edicts, the “refusal to pay taxes” would not have thrown such a panic among the Prussian “loyal subjects” and the social question would have been solved, too, without an imposed constitution.

Montesquieu L VI.

It is well known that the *Neue Preußische Zeitung* declared our Hansemann a Communist because he proposed to abolish tax exemptions. Our Montesquieu, who has never read the *Neue Preußische Zeitung*, hits upon the idea on his own in Cologne of declaring everyone who threatens the octroyed constitution a “Communist” and a “red republican”! So vote for Manteuffel or you are not only personal enemies of labour and of the division of labour, but also Communists and red republicans. Accept Brüggemann’s latest “legal basis” – or renounce the Code civil! Figaro, tu n’aurais pas trouvé ça!

More of Montesquieu LVI tomorrow!

* Cologne, 21 January. Montesquieu LVI is trying to palm off the “gift horse”, the imposed constitution, on the primary electors with all the petty cunning of a seasoned horse-dealer. He is the Montesquieu of the horse market.

Whoever does not want the imposed constitution wants the republic, and not merely the republic pure and simple, but the red republic! Unfortunately, in our elections nothing less is at stake than republic and red republic. It is simply a question of:

Do you want the old absolutism together with a freshly furbished system of estates – or do you want a bourgeois representative system? Do you want a political constitution that corresponds to the “existing social relations” of past centuries, or do you want a political constitution that suits the “existing social relations” of your own century?

In this matter, then, nothing less is involved than a struggle against bourgeois property relations such as is taking place in France and is beginning to take shape in England. On the contrary, it is a struggle against a political constitution which endangers “bourgeois property relations” by surrendering the helm of state to the representatives of “feudal property relations”, the king by the grace of God, the army, the bureaucracy, the country squires and a few allied financial barons and petty bourgeois.

By means of the imposed constitution the social question has been resolved in the sense of these gentlemen. There is no doubt about that.

Karl Marx

What is the “social question” in the sense of the official? It is the safeguarding of his salary and of the position of pre-eminence over the people which he has hitherto enjoyed.

And what is the “social question” in the sense of the nobility and its great landowners? It is the safeguarding of the old feudal rights attached to the land, the monopolisation of the most lucrative posts in the army and the civil service by its families, and, lastly, the direct receipt of alms from the state treasury. Apart from these tangible material and therefore “most sacred” interests of the gentlemen “with God, for King and Fatherland”, what is naturally at stake for them is the safeguarding of the social distinctions that separate their race from the vile bourgeois, peasant and plebeian race. The old National Assembly was, after all, dispersed precisely because it ventured to lay a hand on these “most sacred interests”. What the gentlemen understand by “revision” of the imposed constitution is, as was indicated earlier, nothing other than the introduction of the estates system, i.e. a form of political constitution which represents the “social” interests of the feudal nobility, the bureaucracy and the throne by the grace of God.

Once again! There is no doubt that the “social question” in the sense of the nobility and the bureaucracy has been resolved by the imposed constitution, i.e. that it bestows on these gentlemen a form of government which guarantees the exploitation of the people by these demigods.

But has the “social question” in the sense of the bourgeoisie been resolved by the imposed constitution? In other words, does the bourgeoisie obtain a state form in which it can freely administer the common affairs of its class – the interests of trade, industry and agriculture –, employ state funds in the most productive manner, arrange the state budget in the cheapest way, effectively protect national labour abroad, and open up at home all the well-springs of national wealth that are blocked by feudal sludge?

Does history show us a single example in which the bourgeoisie has ever succeeded, with a king octroyed by the grace of God, in enforcing a political state form corresponding to its material interests?

To found constitutional monarchy, the bourgeoisie had to drive out the Stuarts twice in England, the hereditary Bourbons in France, and the Nassaus in Belgium.

Whence this phenomenon?

A hereditary king by the grace of God – that is not a single individual, that is the incarnate representative of the old society within the new society. The state power in the hands of the king by the grace of God – that is the state power in the hands of the old society, which now exists only as a ruin, that is the state power in the hands of the feudal estates whose interest stands in the most hostile opposition to the interest of the bourgeoisie.

But the foundation of the imposed constitution is precisely the “king by the grace of God”.

Just as the feudal elements of society see their political summit in the monarchy by the grace of God, so the monarchy by the grace of God sees its social foundation in the feudal estates, the well-known “supporters of the throne”.

Whenever, therefore, the interests of the feudal lords and of the army and bureaucracy they dominate cut across the interests of the bourgeoisie, the God-blessed monarchy will each time be driven to a coup d’état and a revolutionary or counter-revolutionary crisis will be prepared.

Why was the National Assembly driven out? Only because it represented the interest of the bourgeoisie against the interest of feudalism; because it wanted to abolish the feudal relations that obstruct agriculture, to subordinate the army and the bureaucracy to trade and industry, to put a stop to the squandering of the state treasury, to abolish noble and bureaucratic titles.

In all these questions the interest of the bourgeoisie was primarily and directly at stake.

Thus, coups d’état and counter-revolutionary crises are the vital conditions of the monarchy by the grace of God, which has been forced by the March Revolution or by other events to humble itself and reluctantly assume the sham form of a bourgeois monarchy.

Can credit ever revive in a state form whose necessary point is coups d’état, counter-revolutionary crises and states of siege?

What a delusion!

Bourgeois industry must burst the fetters of absolutism and feudalism. A revolution against both merely proves that bourgeois industry has reached a high point at which it must achieve a state form suited to it or perish.

The bureaucratic system of tutelage secured by the imposed constitution is the death of industry. Only consider the Prussian mining administration, the factory regulations, etc.! When the English manufacturer compares his production costs with those of the Prussian manufacturer, he will always in the first place ascertain the loss of time suffered by the Prussian manufacturer through the necessary observance of bureaucratic regulations.

What sugar refiner does not recall the Prussian commercial treaty with Holland in 1839? What Prussian industrialist does not blush at the memory of the year 1846, when the Prussian government, out of obligingness to the Austrian government, cut off a whole province’s exports to Galicia, and the Prussian ministry, as bankruptcies followed one upon another in Breslau, declared in astonishment that it had not known that such a considerable export trade to Galicia, etc., was going on!

Men of the same race are placed at the helm of state by the imposed constitution, just as this gift itself comes from the hands of these men. So look twice before you leap.

The Galician affair draws our attention to another point.

At that time the Prussian government, in alliance with Austria and Russia, sacrificed Silesian industry and Silesian trade to counter-revolution. This manoeuvre will be repeated every day. The banker of the Prussian-Austrian-Russian counter-revolution, in which the God-blessed monarchy with its supporters will and must always seek its foreign support – is England. The most dangerous adversary of German industry is that very same – England. We believe these two data speak sufficiently.

Industry fettered at home by bureaucratic shackles, agriculture by feudal privileges, trade abroad sold to England by counter-revolution – such, under the aegis of the imposed constitution, are the destinies of Prussian national wealth.

The report of the “Finance Commission” of the dispersed National Assembly has cast sufficient light on the God-blessed administration of state property.

However, this report only indicates by way of example sums which have been withdrawn from the state treasury in order to prop up the wavering supporters of the throne and to gild the foreign pretenders of absolute monarchy (Don Carlos). But these funds, which are stolen from the pockets of the other citizens so that the aristocracy may lead a life befitting its station and the “props” of the feudal monarchy be kept up, are only a side issue when considering the state budget imposed simultaneously with the Manteuffel constitution. Above all, a strong army, so that the minority may dominate the majority; the largest possible army of officials, so that as many as possible of the general

Montesquieu L VI.
Interest alienated through their private interest; the use of state funds in the most unproductive way, so that wealth, as the *Neue Preußische Zeitung* says, does not make the subjects overweening; the putting aside as much as possible of state funds instead of their industrial employment, so that the government by the grace of God may in easily foreseeable moments of crisis confront the people independently — these are the basic features of the octroyed state economy. The use of taxes to maintain the state power as a repressive, independent and sanctified force in the face of industry, trade and agriculture, instead of degrading it to the profane tool of bourgeois society — that is the life principle of the octroyed Prussian constitution!

As the giver, so the gift. As the present Prussian government, so the constitution it has granted. To characterise the enmity of this government against the bourgeoisie, it suffices to draw attention to its projected industrial ordinance. The government seeks to return to the guild under the pretext of advancing to association. Competition compels production ever more cheaply, hence on an ever larger scale, i.e. with greater capital, with constantly extended division of labour and constantly increased application of machinery. Every new division of labour devalues the old skill of the artisan, every new machine displaces hundreds of workers, every operation on a larger scale, i.e. with larger capital, ruins the small shop and the petty-bourgeois business. The government promises to secure handicraft against factory production, acquired skill against the division of labour, small capital against large capital, by means of feudal guild institutions. Thus the German, and specifically the Prussian nation, which only with difficulty resists complete defeat by English competition by exerting its utmost strength, is to be thrown defenceless into its arms by having an industrial organisation imposed upon it which contradicts the modern means of production and which has been blown sky-high by modern industry!

We are certainly the last to want the rule of the bourgeoisie. We were the first in Germany to raise our voice against it, when the present “men of action” were self-complacently bustling about in subordinate squabbling.

But we call out to the workers and petty bourgeois: Suffer rather in modern bourgeois society, which through its industry creates the material means for the founding of a new society that will liberate all of you, than that you return to a bygone form of society which, under the pretext of saving your classes, hurls the whole nation back into medieval barbarism!

But the government by the grace of God, as we have seen, has as its social substratum medieval estates and conditions. It does not suit modern bourgeois society. It must seek to create a society after its own image. It is pure consistency when it seeks to replace free competition by the guild, machine spinning by the spinning wheel, the steam plough by the hoe.

How is it, then, under these circumstances, that the Prussian bourgeoisie, in complete contradiction to its French, English and Belgian predecessors, trumpets the octroyed constitution (with it the kingship by the grace of God, the bureaucracy and the Junkerdom) as its shibboleth?

The commercial and industrial section of the bourgeoisie throws itself into the arms of the counter-revolution out of fear of the revolution. As if the counter-revolution were anything other than the overture to the revolution?

Besides, there exists a section of the bourgeoisie which, indifferent to the general interests of its class, pursues a particular interest, one even hostile to them. These are the financial barons, the great state creditors, bankers, rentiers, whose wealth grows in the same measure as the people’s poverty, and finally people whose business is staked on the old state conditions, e.g. Dumont and his literary lumpenproletariat. They are ambitious professors, lawyers and the like, people who only in a state where it is a lucrative business to betray the people to the government can hope to obtain respectable posts.

They are individual manufacturers who do good business with the government, suppliers who extract their considerable percentages from the general exploitation of the people, philistines whose importance is lost in a great political life, municipal councillors who under the protection of the previous institutions have promoted their dirty private interests at the expense of public ones, oil dealers who through betrayal of the revolution have become excellencies and knights of the Order of the Eagle, bankrupt cloth merchants and railway speculators who have become royal bank directors, etc., etc.

“These are the friends of the octroyed constitution.” If the bourgeoisie has a heart in its bosom for these its poor brethren, and if it wishes to make itself worthy of the respect of Montesquieu’s LVI, then let it elect electors in the sense of the octroyed constitution.

Karl Marx