Works of Frederick Engels 1895

Introduction to Karl Marx’s

The Class Struggles in France 1848 to 1850

“great importance must be attached to one of the
historical documents of the German labour movement:

the Preface written by
Frederick Engels for the 1895 re-issue of Marx's Class Struggles in
France.” — Rosa Luxemburg.

The work republished here was Marx’s first attempt to
explain a piece of contemporary history by means of his materialist conception,
on the basis of the prevailing economic situation. In the Communist
Manifesto, the theory was applied in broad outline to the whole of modern
history; in the articles by Marx and myself in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung,
it was constantly used to interpret political events of the day. Here, on
the other hand, the question was to demonstrate the inner causal connection in
the course of a development which extended over some years, a development as
critical, for the whole of Europe, as it was typical; hence, in accordance with
the conception of the author, to trace political events back to effects of what
were, in the final analysis, economic causes.

If events and series of events are judged by current history, it will never
be possible to go back to the ultimate economic causes. Even today,
when the specialised press provides such rich material, it still remains
impossible even in England to follow day by day the movement of industry and
trade on the world market and the changes which take place in the methods of
production in such a way as to be able to draw a general conclusion for any
point in time from these manifold, complicated and ever-changing, factors, the
most important of which, into the bargain, generally operate a long time in
realms unknown before they suddenly make themselves forcefully felt on the
surface. A clear overall view of the economic history of a given period can
never be obtained contemporaneously, but only subsequently, after the material
has been collected and sifted. Statistics are a necessary auxiliary aid here,
and they always lag behind. For this reason, it is only too often necessary in
current history to treat this, the most decisive, factor as constant, and the
economic situation existing at the beginning of the period concerned as given
and unalterable for the whole period, or else to take notice of only such
changes in this situation as arise out of the patently manifest events
themselves, and are, therefore, likewise patently manifest. So here the
materialist method has quite often to limit itself to tracing political
conflicts back to the struggles between the interests of the existing social
classes and fractions of classes caused by economic development, and to
demonstrate that the particular political parties are the more or less adequate
political expression of these same classes and fractions of classes.

It is self-evident that this unavoidable neglect of contemporaneous changes
in the economic situation, the very basis of all the processes to be examined,
must be a source of error. But all the conditions required for a comprehensive
presentation of current history inevitably include sources of error —
which, however, keeps nobody from writing current history.

When Marx undertook this work, the source of error mentioned was even more
unavoidable. It was simply impossible during the Revolution period of 1848-49
to follow the economic transformations taking place simultaneously or even to
keep them in view. It was the same during his first months of exile in London,
in the autumn and winter of 1849-50. But that was precisely the time when Marx
began this work. And in spite of these unfavourable circumstances, his exact
knowledge both of the economic situation in France before, and of the political
history of that country after, the February Revolution made it possible for him
to present a picture of events which laid bare their inner connections in a way
never attained ever since, and which later passed with flying colours the
double test applied by Marx himself.

The first test arose when, after the spring of 1850, Marx once again found
time for economic studies, and began by applying himself to the economic
history of the previous ten years. What he had hitherto deduced, half a
priori, from sketchy material, thus became absolutely clear to him from
the facts themselves, namely that the world trade crisis of 1847 had been the
true mother of the February and March revolutions, and that the industrial
prosperity which had been returning gradually since the middle of 1848 and
attained full bloom in 1849 and 1850 was the revitalising force of a
restrengthened European reaction. That was crucially important. Whereas in the
first three articles (which appeared in the January, February and March issues
of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung Politisch-ökonomische Revue, Hamburg,
1850) there was still the expectation of an early, fresh upsurge of
revolutionary vigour, the historical review written by Marx and myself for the
last issue, a double one (May to October), which was published in the autumn of
1850, breaks with these illusions once and for all: “A new revolution is
possible only in consequence of a new crisis. It is, however, just as certain
as this crisis." But that was
the only major change which had to be made. There was absolutely nothing to
alter in the interpretation of events given in the earlier chapters, or in the
causal connections established therein, as proved by the continuation of the
narrative from March 10 up to the autumn of 1850 in the said review. I have,
therefore, included this continuation as the fourth article in the present new
edition.

The second test was even more severe. Immediately after Louis
Bonaparte’s coup d'état of December 2, 1851, Marx dealt afresh with the
history of France from February 1848 up to this event which concluded the
revolutionary period for the time being. (Der 18. Brumaire des Louis
Bonaparte. Third edition, Hamburg, Meissner, 1885) In this pamphlet the
period depicted in our present publication is again dealt with, albeit in
briefer form. Compare this second presentation, written in the light of the
decisive event which happened over a year later, with ours and it will be found
that the author had very little to change.

What gives our work quite special significance is the fact that it was the
first to express the formula in which, by common agreement, the workers’
parties of all countries in the world briefly summarise their demand for
economic transformation: the appropriation of the means of production by
society. In the second chapter, in connection with the “right to
work”, which is described as “the first clumsy formula wherein the
revolutionary demands of the proletariat are summarised”, it is said:
“but behind the right to work stands the power over capital; behind the
power over capital, the appropriation of the means of production,
their subjection to the associated working class and, therefore, the
abolition of wage labour, of capital and of their mutual relations”.
Thus, here, for the first time, the proposition is formulated by which modern
workers’ socialism is sharply differentiated both from all the different
shades of feudal, bourgeois, petty-bourgeois, etc., socialism and from the
confused community of goods of utopian and of primitive
[naturwüchsigen] workers’ communism. If, later, Marx extended
the formula to include appropriation of the means of exchange, this extension,
which in any case was self-evident after the Communist Manifesto, only
expressed a corollary to the main proposition. A few wiseacres in England have
of late added that the “means of distribution” should also be
handed over to society. These gentlemen would be hard put to say what these
economic means of distribution, distinct from the means of production and
exchange, actually are; unless political means of distribution are
meant, taxes, poor relief, including the Sachsenwald and other endowments. But, first,
these are even now means of distribution in the possession of society as a
whole, either of the state or of the community, and second, it is precisely
these we want to abolish.

* * *

When the February Revolution broke out, all of us, as far as our
conceptions of the conditions and the course of revolutionary movements were
concerned, were under the spell of previous historical experience, particularly
that of France. It was, indeed, the latter which had dominated the whole of
European history since 1789, and from which now once again the signal had gone
forth for general revolutionary change. It was, therefore, natural and
unavoidable that our conceptions of the nature and the course of the
“social” revolution proclaimed in Paris in February 1848, of the
revolution of the proletariat, should be strongly coloured by memories of the
prototypes of 1789 and 1830. Moreover, when the Paris uprising found its echo
in the victorious insurrections in Vienna, Milan and Berlin; when the whole of
Europe right up to the Russian frontier was swept into the movement; when
thereupon in Paris, in June, the first great battle for power between the
proletariat and the bourgeoisie was fought; when even the victory of its class
so shook the bourgeoisie of all countries that it fled back into the arms of
the monarchist-feudal reaction which had just been overthrown — there
could be no doubt for us, under the circumstances then obtaining, that the
great decisive battle had commenced, that it would have to be fought out in a
single, long and vicissitudinous period of revolution, but that it could only
end in the final victory of the proletariat.

After the defeats of 1849 we in no way shared the illusions of the vulgar
democrats grouped around the future provisional governments in
partibus. [In partibus infidelium —
in the land of the infidels, outside reality — an addition to the title
of Catholic bishops appointed to non-Christian countries] These vulgar
democrats reckoned on a speedy and definitive victory of the
“people” over the “tyrants”; we reckoned on a long
struggle, after the removal of the “tyrants”, among the
antagonistic elements concealed within this “people” itself. The
vulgar democrats expected sparks to fly again any day; we declared as early as
autumn 1850 that at least the first chapter of the revolutionary period was
closed and that nothing was to be expected until the outbreak of a new world
economic crisis. For which reason we were excommunicated, as traitors to the
revolution, by the very people who later, almost without exception, made their
peace with Bismarck — so far as Bismarck found them worth the trouble.

But history has shown us too to have been wrong, has revealed our point of
view at that time as an illusion. It has done even more; it has not merely
dispelled the erroneous notions we then held; it has also completely
transformed the conditions under which the proletariat has to fight. The mode
of struggle of 1848 is today obsolete in every respect, and this is a point
which deserves closer examination on the present occasion.

All revolutions up to the present day have resulted in the displacement of
the rule of one class by the rule of another; but all ruling classes up to now
have been only small minorities in relation to the ruled mass of the people.
One ruling minority was thus overthrown; another minority seized the helm of
state in its stead and refashioned the state institutions to suit its own
interests. Thus on every occasion a minority group was enabled and called upon
to rule by the given degree of economic development; and just for that reason,
and only for that reason, it happened that the ruled majority either
participated in the revolution for the benefit of the former or else simply
acquiesced in it. But if we disregard the concrete content in each case, the
common form of all these revolutions was that they were minority revolutions.
Even when the majority took part, it did so — whether wittingly or not
— only in the service of a minority; but because of this, or even simply
because of the passive, unresisting attitude of the majority, this minority
acquired the appearance of being the representative of the whole people.

As a rule, after the first great success, the victorious minority split; one
half was satisfied with what had been gained, the other wanted to go still
further, and put forward new demands, which, partly at least, were also in the
real or apparent interest of the great mass of the people. In isolated cases
these more radical demands were actually forced through, but often only for the
moment; the more moderate party would regain the upper hand, and what had been
won most recently would wholly or partly be lost again; the vanquished would
then cry treachery or ascribe their defeat to accident. In reality, however,
the truth of the matter was usually this: the achievements of the first victory
were only safeguarded by the second victory of the more radical party; this
having been attained, and, with it, what was necessary for the moment, the
radicals and their achievements vanished once more from the stage.

All revolutions of modern times, beginning with the great English Revolution
of the seventeenth century, showed these features, which appeared inseparable
from every revolutionary struggle. They appeared applicable, also, to the
struggle of the proletariat for its emancipation; all the more applicable,
since precisely in 1848 there were but a very few people who had any idea at
all of the direction in which this emancipation was to be sought. The
proletarian masses themselves, even in Paris, after the victory, were still
absolutely in the dark as to the path to be taken. And yet the movement was
there, instinctive, spontaneous, irrepressible. Was not this just the situation
in which a revolution had to succeed, led, it is true, by a minority, though
this time not in the interest of the minority, but in the finest interest of
the majority? If, in all the longer revolutionary periods, it was so easy to
win over the great masses of the people simply by the plausible false
representations of the pressing minorities, why should they be less susceptible
to ideas which were the truest reflection of their economic condition, which
were none other than the clear, rational expression of their needs, of needs
not yet understood but merely vaguely felt by them? To be sure, this
revolutionary mood of the masses had almost always, and usually very speedily,
given way to lassitude or even to a change to the opposite as soon as illusion
evaporated and disappointment set in. But what was involved here were not false
representations, but the implementation of the most vital interests of the
great majority itself, interests which, it is true, were at that time by no
means clear to this great majority, but which were bound to become clear to it
as their practical implementation proceeded, by their convincing obviousness.
And when, as Marx showed in his third article, in the spring of 1850, the
development of the bourgeois republic that arose out of the
“social” Revolution of 1848 had even concentrated real power in the
hands of the big bourgeoisie — monarchistically inclined as it was into
the bargain — and, on the other hand, had grouped all the other social
classes, peasantry as well as petty bourgeoisie, around the proletariat, so
that during and after the common victory, not they but the proletariat grown
wise from experience had to become the decisive factor — was there not
every prospect then of turning the revolution of the minority into a revolution
of the majority?

History has proved us wrong, and all who thought like us. It has made it
clear that the state of economic development on the Continent at that time was
not, by a long way, ripe for the elimination of capitalist production; it has
proved this by the economic revolution which, since 1848, has seized the whole
of the Continent, and has caused big industry to take real root in France,
Austria, Hungary, Poland and, recently, in Russia, while it has made Germany
positively an industrial country of the first rank — all on a capitalist
basis, which in the year 1848, therefore, still had a great capacity for
expansion. But it is precisely this industrial revolution which has everywhere
produced clarity in class relations, has removed a number of intermediate forms
handed down from the period of manufacture and in Eastern Europe even from
guild handicraft, has created a genuine bourgeois and a genuine large-scale
industrial proletariat and has pushed them into the foreground of social
development. However, owing to this, the struggle between these two great
classes, a struggle which, outside England, existed in 1848 only in Paris and,
at the most, in a few big industrial centres, has spread over the whole of
Europe and reached an intensity still inconceivable in 1848. At that time the
many obscure gospels of the sects, with their panaceas; today the single
generally recognised, crystal-clear theory of Marx, sharply formulating
the ultimate aims of the struggle. At that time the masses, sundered and
differing according to locality and nationality, linked only by the feeling of
common suffering, undeveloped, helplessly tossed to and fro from enthusiasm to
despair; today the single great international army of socialists,
marching irresistibly on and growing daily in number, organisation, discipline,
insight and certainty of victory. If even this mighty army of the proletariat
has still not reached its goal, if, far from winning victory by one
mighty stroke, it has slowly to press forward from position to position in
a hard, tenacious struggle, this only proves, once and for all, how impossible
it was in 1848 to win social transformation merely by a surprise attack.

A bourgeoisie split into two dynastic-monarchist sections, a bourgeoisie, however, which
demanded, above all, peace and security for its financial operations, faced by
a proletariat vanquished, indeed, but still a menace, a proletariat around
which petty bourgeois and peasants grouped themselves more and more — the
continual threat of a violent outbreak, which, nevertheless, offered absolutely
no prospect of a final solution — such was the situation, as if
made-to-measure for the coup d'état of the third, the pseudo-democratic
pretender, Louis Bonaparte. On December 2, 1851, by means of the army, he put
an end to the tense situation and secured Europe internal tranquillity, only to
confer upon it the blessing of a new era of wars. The period of revolutions
from below was concluded for the time being; there followed a period of
revolutions from above.

The reversion to the empire in 1851 provided fresh proof of the immaturity
of the proletarian aspirations of that time. But it was itself to create the
conditions under which they were bound to grow mature. Internal tranquillity
ensured the unfettered advancement of the new industrial boom; the necessity of
keeping the army occupied and of diverting the revolutionary currents in an
outward direction produced the wars in which Bonaparte, under the pretext of asserting the
“principle of nationalities”, sought to secure annexations for
France. His imitator, Bismarck, adopted the same policy for Prussia; he carried
out his coup d'état, his revolution from above, in 1866, against the German
Confederation and Austria, and no less against the Prussian
Konfliktskammer. But
Europe was too small for two Bonapartes and thus the irony of history had it
that Bismarck overthrew Bonaparte, and King William of Prussia not only
established the little German empire, but also the French republic. The overall
outcome, however, was that in Europe the independence and internal unity of the
great nations, with the exception of Poland, had become a fact. Within
relatively modest limits, it is true, but for all that on a scale large enough
to allow the development of the working class to proceed without finding
national complications any longer a serious obstacle. The grave-diggers of the
Revolution of 1848 had become the executors of its will. And alongside them
there already rose threateningly the heir of 1848, the proletariat, in the
shape of the International.

After the war of 1870-71, Bonaparte vanished from the stage and
Bismarck’s mission was fulfilled, so that he could now sink back again to
the position of an ordinary Junker. The period, however, was brought to a close
by the Paris Commune. A perfidious attempt by Thiers to steal the cannon of the
Paris National Guard sparked off a victorious rising. It was shown once more
that in Paris none but a proletarian revolution is any longer possible. After
the victory power fell, quite of itself and quite undisputed, into the hands of
the working class. And once again it was proved how impossible even then,
twenty years after the time described in our work, this rule of the working
class still was. On the one hand, France left Paris in the lurch, looked on
while it bled to death from the bullets of MacMahon; on the other hand, the
Commune was consumed in unfruitful strife between the two parties which split
it, the Blanquists (the majority) and the Proudhonists (the minority), neither
of which knew what was to be done. The victory which came as a gift in 1871
remained just as unfruitful as the surprise attack of 1848.

It was believed that the militant proletariat had been finally buried with
the Paris Commune. But, completely to the contrary, it dates its most powerful
resurgence from the Commune and the Franco-Prussian War. The recruitment of the
whole of the population able to bear arms into armies that henceforth could be
counted only in millions, and the introduction of fire-arms, projectiles and
explosives of hitherto unprecedented yield, completely transformed all warfare.
This revolution, on the one hand, put an abrupt end to the Bonapartist war
period and ensured peaceful industrial development by making any war other than
a world war of unprecedented cruelty and absolutely incalculable outcome an
impossibility. On the other hand, it caused military expenditure to rise in
geometrical progression and thereby forced up taxes to exorbitant levels and so
drove the poorer classes of people into the arms of socialism. The annexation
of Alsace-Lorraine, the immediate cause of the mad competition in armaments,
was able to set the French and German bourgeoisie chauvinistically at each
other’s throats; for the workers of the two countries it became a new
bond of unity. And the anniversary of the Paris Commune became the first
universal holiday of the whole proletariat.

The war of 1870-71 and the defeat of the Commune transferred the centre of
gravity of the European workers’ movement in the meantime from France to
Germany, as Marx had foretold. In France it naturally took years to recover
from the blood-letting of May 1871. In Germany, on the other hand, where
industry — fostered, in addition, in positively hothouse fashion by the
blessing of the French milliards — developed at increasing speed,
Social-Democracy experienced a still more rapid and enduring growth. Thanks to
the intelligent use which the German workers made of the universal suffrage
introduced in 1866, the astonishing growth of the party is made plain to all
the world by incontestable figures: 1871, 102,000; 1874, 352,000; 1877, 493,000
Social-Democratic votes. Then came recognition of this advance by high
authority in the shape of the Anti-Socialist Law; the party was temporarily broken up, the number
of votes dropped to 312,000 in 1881. But that was quickly overcome, and then,
under the pressure of the Exceptional Law, without a press, without a legal
organisation and without the right of association and assembly, rapid expansion
began in earnest: 1884, 550,000; 1887, 763,000; 1890, 1,427,000 votes. The hand
of the state was paralysed. The Anti-Socialist Law disappeared; the socialist
vote rose to 1,787,000, over a quarter of all the votes cast. The government
and the ruling classes had exhausted all their expedients — uselessly,
pointlessly, unsuccessfully. The tangible proofs of their impotence, which the
authorities, from night watchman to the imperial chancellor had had to accept
— and that from the despised workers! — these proofs were counted
in millions. The state was at the end of its tether, the workers only at the
beginning of theirs.

But, besides, the German workers rendered a second great service to their
cause in addition to the first, a service performed by their mere existence as
the strongest, most disciplined and most rapidly growing socialist party. They
supplied their comrades in all countries with a new weapon, and one of the most
potent, when they showed them how to make use of universal suffrage.

There had long been universal suffrage in France, but it had fallen into
disrepute through the way it had been abused by the Bonapartist government.
After the Commune there was no workers’ party to make use of it. It had
also existed in Spain since the republic but in Spain election boycotts had
been the rule for all serious opposition parties from time immemorial. The
experience of the Swiss with universal suffrage was also anything but
encouraging for a workers’ party. The revolutionary workers of the Latin
countries had been wont to regard the suffrage as a snare, as an instrument of
government trickery. It was different in Germany. The Communist Manifesto
had already proclaimed the winning of universal suffrage, of democracy, as
one of the first and most important tasks of the militant proletariat, and
Lassalle had again taken up this point. Now that Bismarck found himself
compelled to introduce this franchise as the only means of interesting the mass
of the people in his plans, our workers immediately took it in earnest and sent
August Bebel to the first, constituent Reichstag. And from that day on they
have used the franchise in a way which has paid them a thousandfold and has
served as a model to the workers of all countries. The franchise has been, in
the words of the French Marxist programme, transformé de moyen de duperie
qu'il a été jusquici en instrument d'emancipation — transformed by
them from a means of deception, which it was before, into an instrument of
emancipation. And if
universal suffrage had offered no other advantage than that it allowed us to
count our numbers every three years; that by the regularly established,
unexpectedly rapid rise in our vote it increased in equal measure the
workers’ certainty of victory and the dismay of their opponents, and so
became our best means of propaganda; that it accurately informed us of our own
strength and that of all opposing parties, and thereby provided us with a
measure of proportion second to none for our actions, safeguarding us from
untimely timidity as much as from untimely foolhardiness — if this had
been the only advantage we gained from the suffrage, it would still have been
much more than enough. But it did more than this by far. In election propaganda
it provided us with a means, second to none, of getting in touch with the mass
of the people where they still stand aloof from us; of forcing all parties to
defend their views and actions against our attacks before all the people; and,
further, it provided our representatives in the Reichstag with a platform from
which they could speak to their opponents in parliament, and to the masses
outside, with quite different authority and freedom than in the press or at
meetings. Of what avail was their Anti-Socialist Law to the government and the
bourgeoisie when election campaigning and socialist speeches in the Reichstag
continually broke through it?

With this successful utilisation of universal suffrage, however, an entirely
new method of proletarian struggle came into operation, and this method quickly
took on a more tangible form. It was found that the state institutions, in
which the rule of the bourgeoisie is organised, offer the working class still
further levers to fight these very state institutions. The workers took part in
elections to particular diets, to municipal councils and to trades courts; they
contested with the bourgeoisie every post in the occupation of which a
sufficient part of the proletariat had a say. And so it happened that the
bourgeoisie and the government came to be much more afraid of the legal than of
the illegal action of the workers’ party, of the results of elections
than of those of rebellion.

For here, too, the conditions of the struggle had changed fundamentally.
Rebellion in the old style, street fighting with barricades, which decided the
issue everywhere up to 1848, had become largely outdated.

Let us have no illusions about it: a real victory of insurrection over the
military in street fighting, a victory as between two armies, is one of the
rarest exceptions. And the insurgents counted on it just as rarely. For them it
was solely a question of making the troops yield to moral influences which, in
a fight between the armies of two warring countries, do not come into play at
all or do so to a much smaller extent. If they succeed in this, the troops fail
to respond, or the commanding officers lose their heads, and the insurrection
wins. If they do not succeed in this, then, even where the military are in the
minority, the superiority of better equipment and training, of uniform
leadership, of the planned employment of the military forces and of discipline
makes itself felt. The most that an insurrection can achieve in the way of
actual tactical operations is the proficient construction and defence of a
single barricade. Mutual support, the disposition and employment of reserves
— in short, concerted and co-ordinated action of the individual
detachments, indispensable even for the defence of one borough, not to speak of
the whole of a large town, will be attainable only to a very limited extent,
and usually not at all. Concentration of the military forces at a decisive
point is, of course, out of the question here. Hence passive defence is the
predominant form of struggle; an attack will be mounted here and there, by way
of exception, in the form of occasional thrusts and assaults on the flanks; as
a rule, however, it will be limited to the occupation of positions abandoned by
retreating troops. In addition, the military have at their disposal artillery
and fully equipped corps of trained engineers, means of warfare which, in
nearly every case, the insurgents entirely lack. No wonder, then, that even the
barricade fighting conducted with the greatest heroism — Paris, June
1848; Vienna, October 1848; Dresden, May 1849 — ended in the defeat of
the insurrection as soon as the leaders of the attack, unhampered by political
considerations, acted according to purely military criteria, and their soldiers
remained reliable.

The numerous successes of the insurgents up to 1848 were due to a great
variety of causes. In Paris, in July 1830 and February 1848, as in most of the
Spanish street fighting, a civic guard stood between the insurgents and the
military. This guard either sided directly with the insurrection, or else by
its lukewarm, indecisive attitude caused the troops likewise to vacillate, and
supplied the insurrection with arms into the bargain. Where this civic guard
opposed the insurrection from the outset, as in June 1848 in Paris, the
insurrection was vanquished. In Berlin in 1848, the people were victorious
partly through considerable reinforcements in the shape of new fighting forces
during the night and the morning of March 19th, partly as a result of the
exhaustion and poor rations of the troops, and, finally, partly as a result of
the paralysis engendered by the command. But in all cases the fight was won
because the troops failed to respond, because the commanding officers lost the
faculty to decide or because their hands were tied.

Even in the classic time of street fighting, therefore, the barricade
produced more of a moral than a material effect. It was a means of shaking the
steadfastness of the military. If it held out until this was attained, victory
was won; if not, the outcome was defeat. This is the main point which must be
kept in view, also when examining the outlook for possible future street
fighting. [The last sentence is omitted in Die Neue
Zeit and in the 1895 edition of Die Klassenkampfe in Frankreich 1848
bis 1850]

Back in 1849 already, this outlook was pretty poor. Everywhere the
bourgeoisie had thrown in its lot with the governments, “culture and
property” had hailed and feasted the military moving against
insurrection. The barricade had lost its magic; the soldier no longer saw
behind it “the people”, but rebels, subversives, plunderers,
levellers, the scum of society; the officer had in the course of time become
versed in the tactical forms of street fighting, he no longer marched straight
ahead and without cover against the improvised breastwork, but went round it
through gardens, yards and houses. And this was now successful, with a little
skill, in nine cases out of ten.

But since then there have been very many more changes, and all in favour of
the military. If the big towns have become considerably bigger, the armies have
become bigger still. Paris and Berlin have, since 1848, grown less than
fourfold, but their garrisons have grown more than that. By means of the
railways, these garrisons can, in twenty-four hours, be more than doubled, and
in forty-eight hours they can be increased to huge armies. The arming of this
enormously increased number of troops has become incomparably more effective.
In 1848 the smooth-bore, muzzle-loading percussion gun, today the
small-calibre, breech-loading magazine rifle, which shoots four times as far,
ten times as accurately and ten times as fast as the former. At that time the
relatively ineffective round shot and grape-shot of the artillery; today the
percussion shells, of which one is sufficient to demolish the best barricade.
At that time the pick-axe of the sapper for breaking through fire proof walls;
today the dynamite cartridge.

On the other hand, all the conditions of the insurgents’ side have
grown worse. An insurrection with which all sections of the people sympathise
is hardly likely to recur; in the class struggle all the middle strata will never in
all probability group themselves around the proletariat so exclusively that in
comparison the party of reaction gathered round the bourgeoisie will well-nigh
disappear. The “people”, therefore, will always appear divided, and
thus a most powerful lever, so extraordinarily effective in 1848, is gone. If
more soldiers who have seen service came over to the insurrectionists, the
arming of them would become so much the more difficult. The hunting and fancy
guns of the munitions shops — even if not previously made unusable by the
removal of part of the lock on police orders — are far from being a match
for the magazine rifle of the soldier, even in close fighting. Up to 1848 it
was possible to make the necessary ammunition oneself out of powder and lead;
today the cartridges differ for each gun, and are everywhere alike only in one
point, namely, that they are a complicated product of big industry, and
therefore not to be manufactured ex tempore, with the result that most
guns are useless as long as one does not possess the ammunition suited only to
them. And, finally, since 1848 the newly built quarters of the big cities have
been laid out in long, straight, broad streets, tailor-made to give full effect
to the new cannons and rifles. The revolutionary would have to be mad to choose
of his own accord the new working class districts in the north or east of
Berlin for a barricade fight.

Does that mean that in the future street fighting will no longer play any
role? Certainly not. It only means that the conditions since 1848 have become
far more unfavourable for civilian fighters and far more favourable for the
military. In future, street fighting can, therefore, be victorious only if this
disadvantageous situation is compensated by other factors. Accordingly, it will
occur more seldom at the beginning of a great revolution than at its later
stages, and will have to be undertaken with greater forces. These, however, may
then well prefer, as in the whole great French Revolution or on September 4 and
October 31, 1870, in Paris, the open attack to passive barricade tactics.

Does the reader now understand why the powers-that-be positively want to get
us to go where the guns shoot and the sabres slash? Why they accuse us today of
cowardice, because we do not take without more ado to the streets, where we are
certain of defeat in advance? Why they so earnestly implore us to play for once
the part of cannon fodder?

The gentlemen pour out their petitions and their challenges for nothing, for
absolutely nothing. We are not that stupid. They might just as well demand from
their enemy in the next war that he should accept battle in the line formation
of old Fritz, [Frederick II] or in the columns of
whole divisions a la Wagram and Waterloo, and with the flint-lock in his hands at that. If
conditions have changed in the case of war between nations, this is no less
true in the case of the class struggle. The time of surprise attacks, of
revolutions carried through by small conscious minorities at the head of masses
lacking consciousness is past. Where it is a question of a complete
transformation of the social organisation, the masses themselves must also be
in on it, must themselves already have grasped what is at stake, what they are
fighting for, body and soul.

The history of the last fifty years has taught us that. But in order that
the masses may understand what is to be done, long, persistent work is
required, and it is just this work that we are now pursuing, and with a success
which drives the enemy to despair.

In the Latin countries, too, it is being realised more and more that the old
tactics must be revised. Everywhere the German example of utilising the
suffrage, of winning all posts accessible to us, has been imitated; everywhere
the unprepared launching of an attack has been relegated to the background.
[In Die Neue Zeit and in the 1895 edition of
Die Klassenkämpfe in Frankreich the words “everywhere the
unprepared launching of an attack has been relegated to the background”
are omitted.] In France, where for more than a hundred years the ground
has been undermined by one revolution after another, where there is not a
single party which has not done its share in conspiracies, insurrections and
all other revolutionary actions; in France, where, as a result, the government
is by no means sure of the army and where the conditions for an insurrectionary
coup de main are altogether far more favourable than in Germany — even in
France the Socialists are realising more and more that no lasting victory is
possible for them unless they first win over the great mass of the people, i.e.
the peasants in this instance. Slow propaganda work and parliamentary activity
are recognised here, too, as the immediate tasks of the party. Successes have
not been lacking. Not only have a whole series of municipal councils been won;
fifty Socialists have seats in the Chambers, and they have already overthrown
three ministries and a president of the republic. In Belgium last year the
workers forced the adoption of the franchise, and have been victorious in a quarter of the
constituencies. In Switzerland, in Italy, in Denmark, yes, even in Bulgaria and
Romania the Socialists are represented in the parliaments. In Austria all
parties agree that our admission to the Imperial Council can no longer be
withheld. We will get in, that is certain; the only question still in dispute
is: by which door? And even in Russia, when the famous Zemsky
Sobor meets — that
National Assembly to which young Nicholas offers such vain resistance —
even there we can reckon with certainty on being represented in it.

Of course, our foreign comrades do not in the least renounce their right to
revolution. The right to revolution is, after all, the only really
“historical right”, the only right on which all modern states
rest without exception, Mecklenburg included, whose aristocratic revolution was
ended in 1755 by the “hereditary settlement”, the glorious charter
of feudalism still valid today.

The right to revolution is so incontestably recognised in the general
consciousness that even General von Boguslawski derives the right to a coup
d'état, which he vindicates for his Kaiser, solely from this popular right.

But whatever may happen in other countries, the German Social-Democrats
occupy a special position and thus, at least in the immediate future, have a
special task. The two million voters whom they send to the ballot box, together
with the young men and women who stand behind them as non-voters, form the most
numerous, most compact mass, the decisive “shock force” of the
international proletarian army. This mass already supplies over a quarter of
the votes cast; and as the by-elections to the Reichstag, the Diet elections in
individual states, the municipal council and trades court elections
demonstrate, it is constantly on the increase. Its growth proceeds as
spontaneously, as steadily, as irresistibly, and at the same time as tranquilly
as a natural process. All government intervention has proved powerless against
it. We can count even today on two and a quarter million voters. If it
continues in this fashion, by the end of the century we shall have the greater
part of the middle strata of society, petty bourgeoisie and small peasants, and
we shall grow into the decisive power in the land, before which all other
powers will have to bow, whether they like it or not. To keep this growth going
without interruption until it gets beyond the control of the prevailing
governmental system of itself, not to fritter away this daily increasing shock
force in vanguard skirmishes, but to keep it intact until the decisive day,
[In Die Neue Zeit and in the 1895 edition of
Die Klassenkämpfe in Frankreich the words “not to fritter away
this daily increasing shock force in vanguard skirmishes, but to keep it intact
until the decisive day” are omitted.] that is our main task. And
there is only one means by which the steady rise of the socialist fighting
forces in Germany could be temporarily halted, and even thrown back for some
time: a clash on a grand scale with the military, a blood-letting like that of
1871 in Paris. In the long run even that would be overcome. To shoot a party
which numbers millions out of existence is too much even for all the magazine
rifles of Europe and America. But the normal development would be impeded, the
shock force would, perhaps, not be available at the critical moment, the
decisive combat [In Die Neue Zeit and in the
1895 edition of Die Klassenkämpfe in Frankreich the words “the
shock force would, perhaps, not be available at the critical moment” are
omitted and instead of “the decisive combat” the word
“decision” is printed.] would be delayed, protracted and
attended by a heavier toll.

The irony of world history turns everything upside down. We, the
“revolutionaries”, the “overthrowers” — we are
thriving far better on legal methods than on illegal methods and overthrow. The
parties of order, as they call themselves, are perishing under the legal
conditions created by themselves. They cry despairingly with Odilon Barrot: la
légalité nous tue, legality is the death of us; whereas we, under this legality, get firm muscles
and rosy cheeks and look like life eternal. And if we are not so crazy
as to let ourselves be driven to street fighting in order to please them, then
in the end there is nothing left for them to do but themselves break through
this dire legality.

Meanwhile they make new laws against overthrows. Again everything is turned
upside down. These anti-overthrow fanatics of today, are they not themselves
the overthrowers of yesterday? Have we perchance evoked the civil war
of 1866? Have we driven the King of Hanover, the Elector of Hesse, and
the Duke of Nassau from their hereditary lawful domains and annexed these
hereditary domains? And these
overthrowers of the German Confederation and three crowns by the grace of God
complain of overthrow! Quis tulerit Gracchos de seditione querentes?
[Who would suffer the Gracchi to complain of sedition?,
Juvenal, Satire, 11.24] Who could allow the Bismarck
worshippers to rail at overthrow?

Let them, nevertheless, put through their anti-overthrow bills, make them
still worse, transform the whole penal law into india-rubber, they will gain
nothing but fresh proof of their impotence. If they want to deal
Social-Democracy a serious blow they will have to resort to quite other
measures. They can cope with the Social-Democratic overthrow, which just now is
doing so well by keeping the law, only by an overthrow on the part of the
parties of Order, an overthrow which cannot live without breaking the law. Mr.
Roessler, the Prussian bureaucrat, and Mr. von Boguslawski, the Prussian
general, have shown them the only way perhaps still possible of getting at the
workers, who simply refuse to let themselves be lured into street fighting.
Breach of the constitution, dictatorship, return to absolutism, regis
voluntas suprema lex ! [The King’s will is the
supreme law!]. Therefore, take courage, gentlemen; here half measures
will not do; here you must go the whole hog!

But do not forget that the German empire, like all small states and
generally all modern states, is a product of contract; of the
contract, first, of the princes with one another and, second, of the princes
with the people. If one side breaks the contract, the whole contract falls to
the ground; the other side is then also no longer bound, as Bismarck
demonstrated to us so beautifully in 1866. If, therefore, you break the
constitution of the Reich, Social-Democracy is free, and can do as it pleases
with regard to you. But it will hardly blurt out to you today what it is going
to do then. [In Die Neue Zeit and in the 1895
edition of Die Klassenkämpfe in Frankreich the end of this paragraph
starting with the words “as Bismarck” is omitted.]

It is now, almost to the year, sixteen centuries since a dangerous party of
overthrow was likewise active in the Roman empire. It undermined religion and
all the foundations of the state; it flatly denied that Caesar’s will was
the supreme law; it was without a fatherland, was international; it spread over
the whole empire, from Gaul to Asia, and beyond the frontiers of the empire. It
had long carried on seditious activities underground in secret; for a
considerable time, however, it had felt itself strong enough to come out into
the open. This party of overthrow, which was known by the name of Christians,
was also strongly represented in the army; whole legions were Christian. When
they were ordered to attend the sacrificial ceremonies of the pagan established
church, in order to do the honours there, the subversive soldiers had the
audacity to stick peculiar emblems — crosses — on their helmets in
protest. Even the customary barrack bullying of their superior officers was
fruitless. The Emperor Diocletian could no longer quietly look on while order,
obedience and discipline in his army were being undermined. He stepped in with
vigour, while there was still time. He promulgated an anti-Socialist — I
beg your pardon, I meant to say anti-Christian-law. The meetings of the
overthrowers were forbidden , their meeting halls were closed or even pulled
down, the Christian emblems, crosses, etc., were, like the red handkerchiefs in
Saxony, prohibited. Christians were declared ineligible for holding public
office; they were not to be allowed to become even corporals. Since at that
time there were no judges so well trained in “respect of persons”
as Mr. von Köller’s anti-overthrow bill assumes, Christians were
forbidden out of hand to seek justice before a court. Even this exceptional law
was to no avail. The Christians tore it down from the walls with scorn; they
are even supposed to have set fire to the Emperor’s palace in Nicomedia
in his presence. Then the latter revenged himself by the great persecution of
Christians in the year 303 A.D. It was the last of its kind. And it was so
effective that seventeen years later the army consisted overwhelmingly of
Christians, and the succeeding autocrat of the whole Roman empire, Constantine,
called the Great by the priests, proclaimed Christianity the state religion.

F. Engels

London, March 6, 1895