Friedrich Engels

Preface [to “Karl Marx before the Cologne Jury”]

After: “Karl Marx before the Cologne Jury”, Hottingen-Zurich 1885.

For a better understanding of the proceedings that follow, it will suffice to assemble the principal events to which they are linked.

The cowardice of the German bourgeoisie had allowed the feudal-bureaucratic-absolutist reaction to recover from the shattering blows of March 1848 to such an extent that a second decisive struggle was already imminent at the end of October. The fall of Vienna, after long and heroic resistance, gave the Prussian camarilla the courage for a coup d’état. The tame Berlin “National Assembly” was still too wild for it. It was to be broken up, an end was to be put to the revolution.

On 8 November 1848 the Brandenburg-Manteuffel ministry was formed. On the 9th it transferred the seat of the Assembly from Berlin to Brandenburg so that, undisturbed by the revolutionary influences of Berlin, it might deliberate “freely” under the protection of bayonets. The Assembly refuses to go; the civic guard refuses to take action against the Assembly. The ministry dissolves the civic guard, disarms it without its offering resistance, and declares Berlin in a state of siege. The Assembly responds by impeaching the ministry for high treason on 13 November. The ministry harries the Assembly from one Berlin venue to another. On the 15th the Assembly resolves that the Brandenburg ministry is not entitled to dispose of state funds or to levy taxes so long as it, the Assembly, cannot freely continue its sittings in Berlin.

This resolution to refuse payment of taxes could become effective only if the people opposed the collection of taxes with armed force. And at that time the civic guard still had plenty of weapons in its hands. Despite this, people almost everywhere remained at passive resistance. Only in a few places did they prepare to drive out force with force. The boldest call for this, however, remained that of the committee of the democratic associations of the Rhine Province, which sat in Cologne and consisted of
Marx,

Schapper
and
Schneider.

The committee was under no illusion that the struggle against the coup d’état victoriously carried out in Berlin could be taken up with success on the Rhine. The Rhine Province possessed five fortresses; in the province itself, in Westphalia, Mainz, Frankfurt and Luxembourg alone lay roughly one-third of the entire Prussian army, including numerous regiments from the eastern provinces. In Cologne and other towns the civic guard had already been dissolved and disarmed. But what was at issue was not immediate victory in Cologne, which had itself been freed from the state of siege only a few weeks before. What was at issue was to set an example for the other provinces and thereby to save the revolutionary honour of the Rhine Province. And that had been done.

The Prussian bourgeoisie, which had ceded one position of power after another back to the government out of fear of the then still half-dreaming convulsions of the proletariat, which had long since felt remorse for its earlier appetites for power, which since March no longer knew which way to turn for fear, because here the forces of the old society grouped around absolutism and there the young proletariat, dawning to consciousness of its class position, confronted it threateningly—the Prussian bourgeoisie did what it had always done at the decisive moment: it ducked. And the workers were not so stupid as to strike out for the bourgeoisie without the bourgeoisie; for them—particularly on the Rhine—the Prussian questions were in any case purely local questions; if they were to go through fire once in the interests of the bourgeoisie, then let it be in and for the whole of Germany at once. It was a significant portent that even then the “Prussian point” absolutely did not appeal to the workers.

In short, the government was victorious. A month later, on 5 December, it was able to dissolve definitively the Berlin Assembly, which had until then eked out a fairly shabby existence, and to impose a new constitution, which, however, only actually came into life after it had been degraded to a mere constitutional farce.

On the day after the appearance of the appeal, 20 November, the three signatories were summoned before the examining magistrate; proceedings for rebellion were initiated against them. At that time there was not even mention of arrest in Cologne itself. On 7 February the Neue Rheinische Zeitung had to face its first press trial; Marx, I and the manager Korff appeared before the jury and were acquitted. The next day the trial of the committee was heard. The people had already passed their verdict in advance by electing the defendant Schneider to the post of deputy for Cologne a fortnight before.

Marx’s speech for the defence naturally constitutes the high point of the proceedings. It is interesting from two aspects in particular.

First, because it is a communist who here has to make clear to the bourgeois jury that the actions he has committed and for which he stands before them as a defendant are actions which it was not only permissible to commit, but actually the duty and obligation of their class, the bourgeoisie, to carry through to their utmost consequences. This fact alone suffices to characterise the attitude of the German, and specifically the Prussian, bourgeoisie during the revolutionary period. What is at issue is who is to rule, the social and state forces grouped around the absolute monarchy—feudal big landed property, army, bureaucracy, clergy—or else the bourgeoisie. The proletariat, still in the process of coming into being, has an interest in the struggle only insofar as it obtains, through the victory of the bourgeoisie, air and light for its own development, elbow-room on the battlefield where it is one day to win the victory over all other classes. But neither the bourgeoisie, nor the petty bourgeoisie with it, stirs a finger when the hostile government attacks them in the seat of their power, breaks up their parliament, disarms their civic guard and subjects them itself to a state of siege. Then the communists step into the breach, calling upon them to do what their cursed duty is. In face of the old, feudal society, both—bourgeoisie and proletariat—constitute the new society, they both stand together. The appeal naturally remains without success, and the irony of history has it that the same bourgeoisie is now to sit in judgement here upon the revolutionary, proletarian communist and there upon the counter-revolutionary government.

Secondly, however—and this makes the speech particularly important even for our own days—it upholds the revolutionary standpoint against the hypocritical legality of the government in a manner from which many a one might still take an example today. We called the people to arms against the government? We did so, and it was our duty. We broke the law, we left the legal ground? Very well, but the laws we broke the government had already torn to pieces and thrown at the people’s feet, and a legal ground no longer exists. One may remove us from the path as defeated enemies, but one cannot condemn us.

The official parties, from the “Kreuz-Zeitung” to the “Frankfurter”, reproach the Social-Democratic workers’ party with being a revolutionary party, with refusing to recognise the legal ground that was created in 1866 and 1871, and thereby placing itself—so it is said, at least as far down as the National Liberals—outside the common law. I shall disregard the monstrous view that anyone could place himself outside the common law by asserting an opinion. That is the pure police state, which one would do better to practise only in secret and to preach the rule-of-law state in phrase. But what else is the legal ground of 1866 than a revolutionary ground? The Federal Constitution is broken and war declared on the federal allies. No, says Bismarck, the others committed the breach of the federal treaty. To which the answer is that a revolutionary party must be very clumsy indeed if it does not find at least as good legal grounds for every armed rising as Bismarck found for his in 1866. Then civil war is provoked, for the war of 1866 was nothing else. And every civil war is a revolutionary war. The war is waged with revolutionary means. An alliance is formed with foreign powers against Germans; Italian troops and ships are led into battle, Bonaparte is baited with the prospect of German territorial acquisitions on the Rhine. A Hungarian legion is formed, which is to fight for revolutionary ends against its hereditary sovereign; in Hungary one relies on Klapka as in Italy on Garibaldi. One wins and—swallows three crowns by the grace of God, Hanover, Electoral Hesse, Nassau, each of which was at least as legitimate, as much “hereditary” and “by the grace of God” as the Crown of Prussia. Finally, an Imperial Constitution is forced upon the remaining federal allies, which, for example, in the case of Saxony was accepted just as voluntarily as the Peace of Tilsit was by Prussia in its day.

Do I complain of this? I would not dream of it. One does not complain of historical events; on the contrary, one endeavours to understand their causes and with them their consequences, which are far from exhausted. But what one has a right to demand is that the people who did all this should not reproach other people with being revolutionaries. The German Empire is a creation of revolution—admittedly of a revolution of a peculiar kind, but no less a revolution for that. What is fair for the one is fair for the other. Revolution remains revolution, whether it is carried out by the Crown of Prussia or by a tinker. When the government of the day applies the existing laws to rid itself of its adversaries, it is doing what every government does. But when it imagines it can crush them with the additional thunderword: Revolutionary!—it can at most frighten the philistine. “Revolutionary yourself!” echoes back from all Europe.

The demand that one should cast off the revolutionary nature that follows inevitably from the historical circumstances becomes absolutely comical, however, when it is addressed to a party which is first placed outside the common law, i.e. outside the law, and from which it is then demanded that it should recognise the legal ground which has been abolished precisely
for it
.

That one need waste even a word on such a thing proves once more the politically backward condition of Germany. In the rest of the world everyone knows that the whole of the present political conditions are the result of sheer revolutions. France, Spain, Switzerland, Italy—as many countries, so many governments by the grace of revolution. In England even the Whig Macaulay recognises that the present legal system is founded upon one revolution upon another (revolutions heaped upon revolutions). America has celebrated its revolution every Fourth of July for a hundred years. In the majority of these countries there are parties that hold themselves bound by the existing legal order only so long as it can bind them. But whoever, for example, in France wanted to accuse the Royalists or the Bonapartists of being revolutionary would simply be laughed at.

Only in Germany, where politically nothing is ever done thoroughly (otherwise it would not be torn in two pieces, into Austria and the so-called Germany) and where precisely for that reason the notions of times past but only half overcome vegetate immortally in people’s heads (which is why the Germans call themselves the people of thinkers) – only in Germany can it still happen that a party is required to be bound not only de facto but also morally by the existing so-called legal order; to promise in advance: come what may, it will not overthrow the legal order it is fighting against, even if it could. In other words, it should commit itself to keep the existing political order alive for all eternity. That, and nothing else, is what it means when the German Social Democracy is required to stop being “revolutionary”.

But the German philistine – and his opinion is still the public opinion of Germany – is a peculiar fellow. He has never made a revolution. The workers made the one of 1848 for him – to his horror. In return, he has suffered all the more revolutions. For the makers of revolutions in Germany for three hundred years – and they have gone on making them – were the princes. Their entire territorial sovereignty and finally their full sovereignty was the fruit of rebellions against the emperor. Prussia set them a good example. Prussia could only become a kingdom after the “Great Elector” Friedrich Wilhelm, Elector of Brandenburg, had carried out a successful rebellion against his liege lord, the Crown of Poland, and thus made the Duchy of Prussia independent of Poland. From Frederick II onwards, Prussia’s rebellion against the German Empire was reduced to a system; he “cocked a snook” at the Imperial Constitution far more thoroughly than our worthy Bracke did at the Socialist Law. Then came the French Revolution, and it was suffered by the princes and the philistines with tears and sighs. The German Empire was distributed in the most revolutionary manner by Frenchmen and Russians among the German princes in the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss of 1803, because these princes themselves could not agree on the partition. Then came Napoleon and permitted his very special protégés, the princes of Baden, Bavaria and Württemberg, to seize all immediately imperial counties, baronies and towns lying within and between their territories. Immediately afterwards, these same three high traitors carried out the last successful rebellion against their emperor, made themselves sovereign with Napoleon’s help and thereby finally shattered the old German Empire. Since then, the de facto German emperor, Napoleon, distributed Germany anew roughly every three years among his faithful lackeys, the German princes and others. Finally came the glorious liberation from foreign rule, and as a reward Germany was distributed and bartered away by the Congress of Vienna, i.e. by Russia, France and England, as a general area of compensation for down-at-heel princes, and the German philistines, like so many sheep, were assigned in roughly 2,000 separate scraps of territory to the various thirty-six territorial sovereigns, before the majority of whom they still today “most submissively expire” as before their hereditary sovereigns.

All that is supposed not to have been revolutionary – how right, after all, was Schnapphahnski-Lichnowski when he exclaimed in the Frankfurt Parliament: Historical right has no date – not it hasn’t! It had, in fact, never had one!

The demand made by the German philistine of the German Social-Democratic workers’ party therefore has only one meaning, namely that this party should become philistine like himself and by no means take part in revolutions, but suffer them all. And when the government that has come to power through counter-revolution and revolution makes the same demand, it only means that revolution is good as long as it is made by Bismarck for Bismarck and consorts, but reprehensible when it is made against Bismarck and consorts.

London, 1 July 1885

Friedrich Engels