Karl Marx
The Counter-Revolution in Berlin
* Cologne, 11 November. The Pfuel Ministry was a “misunderstanding”;
Nr. 141, 12 November 1848
Neue Rheinische Zeitung.
its real meaning is the Brandenburg Ministry. The Pfuel Ministry was the table of contents, the Brandenburg Ministry is the content. Brandenburg in the Assembly and the Assembly in Brandenburg. Such is the epitaph of the House of Brandenburg!

Emperor Charles V was admired because he had himself buried while still alive. To chisel a bad joke into his gravestone is more than Charles the Fifth together with his penal code, the highly painful one.

Brandenburg in the Assembly and the Assembly in Brandenburg!

Once a King of Prussia appeared in the Assembly. It was not the real Brandenburg. The Marquis of Brandenburg, who appeared in the Assembly the day before yesterday, was the real King of Prussia.

The guardroom in the Assembly, the Assembly in the guardroom! – That is to say: Brandenburg in the Assembly, the Assembly in Brandenburg!

Or is the Assembly in Brandenburg ... Berlin, as is well known, lies in the province of Brandenburg – to become master ... over the Brandenburg in the Assembly? Will Brandenburg in the Assembly seek protection, as Capet once did in another Assembly?

Brandenburg in the Assembly and the Assembly in Brandenburg is a phrase rich in meaning, ambiguous, pregnant with fate.

Peoples, as is well known, are infinitely less scrupulous with kings than with legislative assemblies. History possesses a catalogue of vain insurrections of the people against the national assemblies. It offers only two great exceptional cases. The English

Karl Marx
people scattered the Long Parliament in the person of Cromwell, the French people the legislative body in the person of Bonaparte. But the Long Parliament had long since become the Rump, the legislative body long since a cadaver.

Are kings happier than peoples in riots against legislative assemblies?

Charles I, James II, Louis XVI, Charles X are not very promising ancestral portraits.

But in Spain, in Italy there are more smiling forebears. And lately in Vienna?

Yet one must not forget that a congress of peoples sat in Vienna and that the Slav popular representatives, with the exception of the Poles, marched with bands playing into the imperial camp.

The war of the Viennese camarilla against the Reichstag was at the same time the war of the Slav Reichstag against the German Reichstag. In the Berlin Assembly, on the other hand, it is not the Slavs who secede, but only the slaves and slaves; slaves are no party, they are at best the baggage-train of a party. The Berlin Right, which has walked out, brings no power to the enemy camp; it infects it with a deadly weakness – with treachery.

In Austria the Slav party has triumphed together with the camarilla; it will now struggle with the camarilla over the spoils of victory. If the Berlin camarilla is victorious, it will not have to share the victory with the Right nor assert it against the Right; it will give it a tip and – kicks.

The Prussian Crown is within its rights when it confronts the Assembly as an absolute Crown. But the Assembly is in the wrong because it does not confront the Crown as an absolute Assembly. Above all it should have had the ministers arrested as high traitors, as high traitors against the sovereignty of the people. It should have outlawed every official who obeys orders other than its own, declared him an outlaw.

However, it is possible that the political weakness with which the National Assembly in Berlin appears will become its bourgeois strength in the provinces.

The bourgeoisie would so gladly have transformed the feudal monarchy into a bourgeois monarchy by amicable means. After it had wrested from the feudal party the coats of arms, titles, and the dues belonging to feudal property, which offended its burgher pride and violated the bourgeois mode of appropriation, it would so gladly have married the feudal party and jointly with it subjugated the people. But the old

The Counter-Revolution in Berlin
bureaucracy will not sink down to become the servant of a bourgeoisie whose despotic schoolmistress it previously was. The feudal party will not let its distinctions and its interests go up in flames on the altar of the bourgeoisie. And the Crown, finally, perceives in the elements of the old feudal society, of which it is the highest excrescence, its true native social soil, while in the bourgeoisie it perceives an alien artificial soil upon which it is borne only on condition of stunting.

The intoxicating “grace of God” turns the bourgeoisie into a sobering legal title, the rule of blood into the rule of paper, the royal sun into a bourgeois Austral lamp.

Therefore the monarchy would not be cajoled by the bourgeoisie. It replied to its half revolution with a whole counter-revolution. It threw the bourgeoisie back into the arms of revolution, of the people, crying out to it:

Brandenburg in the Assembly and the Assembly in Brandenburg.

If we admit that we expect no reply from the bourgeoisie appropriate to the situation, we must not fail, on the other hand, to remark that the Crown also, in its revolt against the National Assembly, takes refuge in hypocritical half-measures and hides its head under the constitutional semblance at the very moment when it is trying to cast off this irksome semblance.

Brandenburg has the German central authority give it the order for its coup d’état. The Guards regiments have been marched into Berlin by order of the central authority. The Berlin counter-revolution takes place by order of the German central authority. Brandenburg orders Frankfurt to give it this order. It disavows its sovereignty at the very moment it seeks to restore it. Herr Bassermann naturally seized with both hands the opportunity to play the servant as master. But he has the satisfaction that the master, for his part, plays the servant.

However the dice may fall in Berlin: the dilemma is posed, king or people – and the people will conquer with the cry: Brandenburg in the Assembly and the Assembly in Brandenburg.

We may still go through a hard school, but it is the preparatory school of the – whole revolution.

Karl Marx
Neue Rheinische Zeitung.
Nr. 141, 12 November 1848.
Second Edition
* Cologne, 11 November. The European revolution describes a cycle. In Italy it began, in Paris it assumed a European character, in Vienna was the first repercussion of the February revolution, in Berlin the repercussion of the Viennese revolution. In Italy, at Naples, the European counter-revolution dealt its first blow, in Paris – the June days – it assumed a European character, in Vienna was the first repercussion of the June counter-revolution, in Berlin it completes itself and compromises itself. From Paris the Gallic cock will once more crow Europe awake.

But in Berlin the counter-revolution compromises itself. In Berlin everything compromises itself, even the counter-revolution.

At Naples the lazzaroni combined with the monarchy against the bourgeoisie.

At Paris the greatest historical struggle that has ever taken place. The bourgeoisie, combined with the lazzaroni, against the working class.

At Vienna a whole swarm of nationalities, which suspect their emancipation in the counter-revolution. In addition, the secret malice of the bourgeoisie against the workers and the Academic Legion. Fighting within the Civic Guard itself. Finally – attack on the part of the people, which gives a pretext for attack on the part of the court.

In Berlin nothing of all this. The bourgeoisie and the people on the one side – the non-commissioned officers on the other.

Wrangel and Brandenburg, two men without head, without heart, without tendency, pure moustache – that is the opposite of this quibbling, know-it-all, irresolute National Assembly.

Will! be it even the will of an ass, an ox, a moustache – will is the only requisite vis-à-vis the will-less quibblers of the March revolution. And the Prussian court, which has no more will than the National Assembly, searches out the two stupidest men in the monarchy, and says to these lions: Represent the will. Pfuel still had a few grains of brain. But before absolute stupidity the reasoners of the March conquests recoil.

“With stupidity the gods themselves struggle in vain,”
the taken-aback National Assembly exclaims.

And these Wrangels, these Brandenburgs, these blockheads who are able to will because they have no will of their own, because they will as they are ordered, who are too stupid to get confused by the orders which are given them with trembling voice, with quivering lip,

The Counter-Revolution in Berlin
they too compromise themselves, in that they do not get round to knocking heads about, the only business for which these battering-rams are fit.

Wrangel brings it off no further than to confess that he knows only a National Assembly that obeys orders! Brandenburg receives instruction in parliamentary decorum and, after he has roused the Chamber to indignation with his coarse, repulsive non-commissioned officer’s dialect, he lets the “tyrant be out-tyrannised” and obeys the orders of the National Assembly, most humbly requesting the floor which he was just about to take.

“Would that I were rather a louse in sheep’s wool
Than such brave stupidity!”

The calm bearing of Berlin delights us; against it the ideals of Prussian non-commissioned officerdom are wrecked.

But the National Assembly? Why does it not pronounce the mise hors de loi, why does it not declare the Wrangels outlaws, why does no deputy step into the midst of Wrangel’s bayonets and declare him outlawed and harangue the soldiery?

Let the Berlin National Assembly leaf through the Moniteur, the Moniteur of 1789–1795.

And what are we doing in these moments?

We refuse to pay taxes. A Wrangel, a Brandenburg comprehends – for these beings learn Arabic from the Highlanders – that they wear a sword and a uniform and draw pay. But whence the sword and the uniform and the pay, that they do not comprehend.

There is only one more means of defeating the monarchy – namely, until the epoch of the anti-June revolution in Paris, which will take place in December.

The monarchy defies not only the peoples, it defies the bourgeoisie.

Defeat it therefore in a bourgeois way.

And how does one defeat the monarchy in a bourgeois way?

By starving it out.

And how does one starve it out?

By refusing to pay taxes.

Consider it well! All the princes of Prussia, all the Brandenburgs and Wrangels produce no – commissary bread. You, you yourselves produce the commissary bread.

Karl Marx
Neue Rheinische Zeitung.
No. 142, November 14, 1848

* Köln, November 13. Like the French National Assembly once found its official meeting-place closed and had to continue its sessions in the tennis court, so the Prussian National Assembly in the Schützenhaus.

The resolution adopted in the Schützenhaus and communicated by us, on the basis of a report from our Berlin correspondent, in the extra edition issued this morning, according to which Brandenburg is declared a traitor, is not to be found in the report of the Kölnische Zeitung.

Meanwhile, we have just received a letter from a member of the National Assembly, which says literally:

The National Assembly has unanimously (242 members) declared that Brandenburg, by this measure (the dissolution of the civic guard), has rendered himself guilty of high treason, and that anyone who, actively or passively, participates in the execution of this measure is to be regarded as a traitor.

Dumont’s credibility is known.

By declaring Brandenburg a traitor, the obligation to pay taxes ceases of itself. One owes no taxes to a traitorous government. We shall tomorrow communicate to our readers in detail how, in the oldest constitutional country, England, similar collisions are dealt with in regard to the refusal to pay taxes. Moreover, the traitorous government itself has shown the people the right way by immediately refusing the National Assembly the taxes (allowances, etc.) and seeking to starve it out.

The aforementioned deputy further writes to us:

“The civic guard will not surrender its weapons.”

The struggle thus seems unavoidable, and it is the duty of the Rhine Province to hasten with men and arms to the aid of the Berlin National Assembly.