The following work was written in London in the summer of 
1850, the recent counter-revolution still fresh in mind; it appeared 
in the 5th and 6th issues of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. 
Politisch-okonomische Revue, edited by Karl Marx, Hamburg, 1850. 
My political friends in Germany desire it to be reprinted, and I 
accede to their desire, because, to my regret, the work is still 
timely today. . 

It makes no claim to providing material derived from independ- 
ent research. On the contrary, all the material on the peasant 
risings and on Thomas Munzer is taken from Zimmermann.’ His 
book, despite gaps here and there, is still the best compilation of 
factual data. Moreover, old Zimmermann enjoyed his subject. The 
same revolutionary instinct, which prompted him throughout the 
book to champion the oppressed class, made him later one of the 
best of the extreme Left '?? in Frankfurt.” 

If, nevertheless, Zimmermann’s presentation lacks inner cohe- 
sion; if it does not succeed in showing the political and religious 
controversies of the times as a reflection of the contemporary class 
struggles; if it sees in these class struggles only oppressors and 
oppressed, evil folk and good folk, and the ultimate victory of the 
evil ones; if its exposition of the social conditions which 
determined both the outbreak and the outcome of the struggle is 
extremely defective, it was the fault of the time in which the book 

came into existence. On the contrary, for its time, it is written 
quite realistically and is a laudable exception among the German 
idealist works on’ history. 

My presentation, while sketching the historical course of the 
struggle only in its bare outlines, attempted to explain the origin 
of the Peasant War, the position of the various parties that played 
a part in it, the political and religious theories by which those 
parties sought to clarify their position in their own minds, and 
finally the result of the struggle itself as following logically from 
the historically established social conditions of life of these classes; 
that is to say, it attempted to demonstrate the political structure of 
Germany at that time, the revolts against it, and the contemporary 
political and religious theories not as causes but as results of the 
stage of development of agriculture, industry, roads and water- 
ways, commerce in commodities and money then obtaining in 
Germany. This, the only materialist conception of history, 
originates not with myself but with Marx, and can also be found in 
his works on the French Revolution of 1848-49, in the same 
Revue, and in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.'”° 

The parallel between the German Revolution of 1525 and that 
of 1848-49 was too obvious to be altogether ignored at that time. 
Nevertheless, despite the uniformity in the course of events, where 
various local revolts were crushed one after another by one and 
the same princely army, despite the often ludicrous similarity in 
the behaviour of the city burghers in both cases, the difference 
was also clear and distinct. 

‘Who profited from the Revolution of 1525? The princes. Who 
profited from the Revolution of 1848? The big princes, Austria 
and Prussia. Behind the minor princes of 1525 stood the petty 
burghers, who chained the princes to themselves by taxes. Behind 
the big princes of 1850, behind Austria and Prussia, there stand 
the modern big bourgeois, rapidly getting them under their yoke 
by means of the national debt. And behind the big bourgeois 
stand the proletarians.” * 

I regret to have to say that in this paragraph much too much 
honour was done to the German bourgeoisie. Both in Austria and 
in Prussia it has indeed had the opportunity of “rapidly getting” 
the monarchy “under its yoke by means of the national debt’, but 
nowhere did it ever make use of this opportunity. 

As a result of the war of 1866 Austria fell into the lap of the 
bourgeoisie as a gift. But it does not know how to rule, it is 

powerless and incapable of anything. It can do only one thing: 
savagely attack the workers as soon as they begin to stir. It still 
remains at the helm solely because the Hungarians need it. 

And in Prussia? True, the national debt has increased by leaps 
and bounds, the deficit has become a permanent feature, state 
expenditure grows from year to year, the bourgeoisie have a 
majority in the Chamber and without them taxes cannot be 
increased nor loans floated. But where is their power over the 
state? Only a few months ago, when there was again a deficit, the 
bourgeoisie occupied a most favourable position. By holding out 
only just a little, they could have forced far-reaching concessions. 
What do they do? They regard it as a sufficient concession that 
the government allows them to lay at its feet close on 9 millions, 
not just one year, oh no, but every year, and for all time to come.’”! 

I do not want to blame the poor National-Liberals'* in the 
Chamber more than they deserve. I know they have been left in 
the lurch by those who stand behind them, by the mass of the 
bourgeoisie. This mass does not want to rule. It still has 1848 in its 
bones. 

Why the German bourgeoisie exhibits this astonishing cowardice 
will be discussed later. 

In other respects the above statement has been fully confirmed. 
Beginning with 1850, the more and more definite recession into 
the background of the small states, which serve now only as levers for 
Prussian or Austrian intrigues; the increasingly violent struggle 
between Austria and Prussia for supremacy; finally, the forcible 
settlement of 1866,'% under which Austria retains its own 
provinces, while Prussia subjugates, directly or indirectly, the 
whole of the North, and the three states of the Southwest * are left 
out in the cold for the time being. 

In all this grand performance'’** only the following is of 
importance for the German working class: 

First, that through universal suffrage the workers have got the 
power of being directly represented in the legislative assembly. 

Secondly, that Prussia has set a good example by swallowing 
three other crowns held by the grace of God.'”’ Even the 
National-Liberals do not believe that after this operation it still 
possesses the same immaculate crown, held by the grace of God, 
which it formerly ascribed to itself. 

Thirdly, that there is now only one serious adversary of the’ 
revolution in Germany—the Prussian government. 

And fourthly, that the German-Austrians will now at last have to 
make up their minds as to which they want to be, Germans or 
Austrians; whom they prefer to belong to—Germany or their 
extra-German trans-Leithan appendages.'*° It has been obvious for 
a long time that they have to give up one or the other, but this has 
been continually glossed over by the petty-bourgeois democrats. 

As regards the other important issues relative to 1866, which 
since then have been thrashed out ad nauseam between the 
National-Liberals on the one hand, and the People’s Party '*’ on 
the other, the history of the next few years should prove that 
these two standpoints are so bitterly hostile to one another solely 
because they are the opposite poles of one and the same 
narrow-mindedness. 

The year 1866 has changed almost nothing in the social 
relations of Germany. The few bourgeois reforms—uniform 
weights and measures, freedom of movement, freedom of 
occupation, etc., all within limits acceptable, to the bureaucracy— 
do not even come up to what the bourgeoisie of other West 
European countries have enjoyed for a long time, and leave the 
main abuse, the bureaucratic license system, untouched.’** For the 
proletariat all laws concerning freedom of movement, the right of 
naturalisation, the abolition of passports, etc., are anyhow made 
quite illusory by the common police practices. 

What is much more important than the grand performance of 
1866 is the growth of German industry and commerce, of 
railways, telegraphs and ocean steam shipping since 1848. 
However much this progress lags behind that of England, or even 
of France, during the same period, it is unprecedented for 
Germany and has accomplished more in twenty years than was 
previously done in a whole century. Only now has Germany been 
drawn, seriously and irrevocably, into world commerce. The capital 
of the industrialists has multiplied rapidly; the social position of 
the bourgeoisie has risen accordingly. The surest sign of industrial 
prosperity— swindling—has become very widespread and chained 
counts and dukes to its triumphal chariot. German capital is now 
constructing Russian and Romanian railways—may it not come to 
grief!—whereas only fifteen years ago, German railways went 
begging to English entrepreneurs. How, then, is it possible that the 
bourgeoisie has not conquered political power as well, that it 
behaves so cowardly towards the government? 

It is the misfortune of the German bourgeoisie to arrive too late, 
as is the favourite German manner. The period of its florescence 
is occurring at a time when the bourgeoisie of the other West 

European countries is already politically in decline. In England, 
the bourgeoisie could get its real representative, Bright, into the 
government only by an extension of the franchise, whose 
consequences are bound to put an end to all bourgeois rule. In 
France, where the bourgeoisie as such, as a class in its entirety, 
held power for only two years, 1849 and 1850, under the republic, 
it was able to continue its social existence only by abdicating its 
political power to Louis Bonaparte and the army. And in view of 
the enormously increased interaction of the three most advanced 
European countries, it is today no longer possible for the 
bourgeoisie to settle down to comfortable political rule in Germany 
after this rule has had its day in England and France. 

It is a peculiarity of the bourgeoisie, in contrast to all former 
ruling classes, that there is a turning point in its development after 
which every further expansion of its agencies of power, hence 
primarily of its capital, only tends to make it more and more unfit 
for political rule. “Behind the big bourgeois stand the proletarians.’”* In 
proportion as the bourgeoisie develops its industry, commerce and 
means of communication, in the same proportion it increases the 
numbers of the proletariat. At a certain point—which is not 
necessarily reached everywhere at the same time or at the same 
stage of development—it begins to notice that its proletarian 
double is outgrowing it. From that moment on, it loses the 
strength required for exclusive political rule; it looks around for 
allies with whom to share its rule, or to whom to cede it entirely, as 
circumstances may require. 

In Germany this turning point for the bourgeoisie came as early 
as 1848. To be sure, at that time the German bourgeoisie was less 
frightened by the German proletariat than by the French. The 
June 1848 battle in Paris showed the bourgeoisie what it had to 
expect; the German proletariat was restless enough to prove to it 
that the seed for the same crop had already been sown on German 
soil, too; from that day on the edge was taken off all bourgeois 
political action. The bourgeoisie looked around for allies, sold 
itself to them regardless of the price—and even today it has not 
advanced one step. 

These allies are all reactionary by nature. There is the monarchy 
with its army and its bureaucracy; there is the big feudal nobility; 
there are the small country squires, and there are even the priests. 
With all of these the bourgeoisie made pacts and bargains, if only 
to save its dear skin, until in the end it had nothing left to barter. 

And the more the proletariat developed, the more it became 
aware of itself as a class and acted as a class, the more 
faint-hearted did the bourgeois become. When the astonishingly 
bad strategy of the Prussians triumphed over the astonishingly 
worse strategy of the Austrians at Sadowa, it was difficult to say 
who heaved a deeper sigh of relief—the Prussian bourgeois, who 
was also defeated at Sadowa, or the Austrian. 

In 1870 our big bourgeois are acting exactly the same way as the 
middle burghers acted in 1525. As to the petty bourgeois, artisans 
and shopkeepers, they will always be the same. They hope to 
swindle their way up into the big bourgeoisie; they are afraid of 
being pushed down into the proletariat. Hovering between fear 
and hope, they will save their precious skins during the struggle 
and join the victor when the struggle is over. Such is their nature. 

The social and political activity of the proletariat has kept pace 
with the rise of industry since 1848. The role that the German 
workers play today in their trade unions, cooperative societies, 
political associations and at meetings, elections and in the so-called 
Reichstag, is by itself sufficient proof of the transformation 
Germany has imperceptibly undergone in the last twenty years. It 
redounds to the credit of the German workers that they alone have 
succeeded in sending workers and workers’ representatives into 
parliament, whereas neither the French nor the English have so 
far achieved this. 

But even the proletariat has not yet outgrown the parallel of 
1525. The class exclusively dependent on wages all its life is still 
far from being the majority of the German people. It is, therefore, 
also compelled to seek allies. These can be looked for only among 
the petty bourgeois, the lumpenproletariat of the cities, the small 
peasants and the agricultural labourers. 

The petty bourgeois we have spoken of above. They are extremely 
unreliable except after a victory has been won, when their 
shouting in the beer houses knows no bounds. Nevertheless, there 
are very good elements among them, who join the workers of 
their own accord. 

The lumpenproletariat, this scum of depraved elements from all 
classes, with headquarters in the big cities, is the worst of all the 
possible allies. This rabble is. absolutely venal and absolutely 
brazen. If the French workers, in every revolution, inscribed on 
the houses: Mort aux voleurs! Death to thieves! and even shot 
some, they did so not out of reverence for property, but because 
they rightly considered it necessary above all to keep that gang at 
bay. Every leader of the workers who uses these scoundrels as 

guards or relies on them for support proves himself by this action 
alone a traitor to the movement. 

The small peasants—for the bigger peasants belong to the 
bourgeoisie—differ in kind. They are either feudal peasants and 
still have to perform corvée services for their gracious lord. Now 
that the bourgeoisie has failed in its duty of freeing these people 
from serfdom, it will not be difficult to convince them that they 
can expect salvation only from the working class. 

Or they are tenant farmers. In this case the situation is for the 
most part the same as in Ireland. Rents are pushed so high that in 
times of average crops the peasant and his family can barely make 
ends meet; when the crops are bad he is on the verge of 
starvation, is unable to pay his rent and is consequently entirely at 
the mercy of the landowner. The bourgeoisie never does anything 
for these people, unless it is compelled to. From whom then 
should they expect salvation if not from the workers? 

There remain the peasants who cultivate their own small plots of 
land. In most cases they are so burdened with mortgages that they 
are as dependent on the usurer as the tenant on the landlord. For 
them also there remains only a meagre wage, which, moreover, 
since there are good years and bad years, is highly uncertain. 
These people can least of all expect anything from the 
bourgeoisie, because it is precisely the bourgeoisie, the capitalist 
usurers, who suck the lifeblood out of them. Stull, most of these 
peasants cling to their property, though in reality it does not 
belong to them but to the usurer. It will have to be brought home 
to them all the same that they can be freed from the usurer only 
when a government dependent on the people has transformed all 
mortgages into debts to the state, and thereby lowered the interest 
rates. And this can be brought about only by the working class. 

Wherever medium-sized and large estates prevail, farm labourers 
form the most numerous class in the countryside. This is the case 
throughout the North and East of Germany and it is there that the 
industrial workers of the towns find their most numerous and most 
natural allies. In the same way as the capitalist confronts the 
industrial worker, the landowner or large tenant confronts thé 
farm labourer. The same measures that help the one must also 
help the other. The industrial workers can free themselves only by 
transforming the capital of the bourgeois, that is, the raw 
materials, machines and tools, and the means of subsistence they 
need to work in production, into the property of society, that 1s, 
into their own property, used by them in common. Similarly, the 
farm labourers can be rescued from their hideous misery only 

when, primarily, their chief object of labour, the land itself, is 
withdrawn from the private ownership of the big peasants and the 
still bigger feudal lords, transformed into public property and 
cultivated by cooperative associations of agricultural workers on 
their common account. And here we come to the famous 
resolution of the International Working Men’s Congress in Basle 
that it is in the interest of society to transform landed property — 
into common, national property.’ This resolution was adopted 
mainly for countries where there is large-scale landed property, 
and, consequently, big estates are operated, with.one master and 
many labourers on them. This state of affairs is still largely 
predominant in Germany, and therefore, next to England, the 
resolution was most timely precisely for Germany. The agricultural 
proletariat, the farm labourers—that is the class from which the 
bulk of the armies of the princes is recruited. It is the class which, 
thanks to universal suffrage, now sends into parliament the large 
number of feudal lords and Junkers; but it is also the class nearest 
to the industrial workers of the towns, which shares their living 
conditions and is steeped even more in misery than they. This 
class is impotent because it is split and scattered, but its latent 
power is so well known to the government and nobility shat they 
let the schools fall into decay deliberately in order to keep it 
ignorant. It is the immediate and most urgent task of the German 
labour movement to breathe life into this class and draw it into the 
movement. The day the mass of the farm labourers will have 
learned to understand their own interests, a reactionary— feudal, 
bureaucratic or bourgeois— government will become impossible in 
Germany.