Cologne, October 15. No. 284 of the Augsburg newspaper has been so clumsy as to claim it has discovered that the Rheinische Zeitung is a Prussian woman Communist, true not a real Communist, but nevertheless one who in her imagination coquettes with communism and ogles it in a platonic fashion. Whether this naughty flight of fancy on the part of the lady of Augsburg is unselfish, or whether this idle illusion of her overheated imagination is bound up with speculation and diplomatic dealings, we leave the reader to judge — after we have presented the alleged corpus delicti. The Rheinische Zeitung, we are told, published a communist article on the Berlin family houses,78 and accompanied it with the following comment: This information “should not be without interest for the history of this important question of the time”. It follows, therefore, according to the Augsburg newspaper’s logic, that the Rheinische Zeitung “served, up this kind of unwashed stuff with a recommendation”. So if I say, for instance, “the following information of the Mefistofeles on the domestic affairs of the Augsburg newspaper should be not without interest for the history of this pompous lady”,79 am I then recommending the dirty “stuff” from which the lady of Augsburg tailors her gay wardrobe? Or should communism not be considered an important question of the time simply because it is not one suitable for drawing-rooms and because it wears dirty linen and does not smell of rose-water? However, the lady of Augsburg quite rightly resents our lack of understanding. The importance of communism is not that it is a

highly serious question of the time for France and England. Communism has the European importance of having been used as a phrase by the Augsburg newspaper. One of its Paris correspondents, a convert who treats history as a pastry-cook does botany, recently had a sudden idea: the monarchy ought to try to appropriate socialist and communist ideas in its own way. You understand now the annoyance of the lady of Augsburg, who will never forgive us for presenting communism to the public in all its unwashed nakedness; you understand the sullen irony which exclaims: that is how you recommend communism, which once had the fortunate elegance of serving as a phrase for the Augsburg newspaper! The second reproach levelled against the Rheinische Zeitung is the conclusion of a report from Strasbourg on the communist speeches delivered at the Congress80 there; the two stepsisters had divided the material between them in such a way that the Rhineland one took over the proceedings and the Bavarian one the dinners of the Strasbourg savants. The passage incriminated was literally as follows: “The position of the middle estate today resembles that of the nobility in 1789; at that time, the middle estate claimed for itself the privileges of the nobility and obtained them; today the estate that oums nothing demands to share in the wealth of the middle classes, which are now at the helm. Today the middle estate is better protected against a sudden onslaught than were the nobility in 1789, and it is to be expected that the problem will be solved in a peaceful way.” That the prophecy of Sieyes came true81 and that the tiers etat has become all, and wants to be all, is admitted with the most rueful indignation by Bülow-Cummerow, by the former Berliner politisches Wochenblatt, a  by Dr. Kosegarten, and all the feudalminded writers. That the estate that today owns nothing demands to share in the wealth of the middle classes is a fact which, without the talk at Strasbourg, and in spite of Augsburg’s silence, is obvious to everyone in Manchester, Paris and Lyons.82 Does the lady of Augsburg believe that her displeasure and her silence have refuted the facts of the time? She is impertinent even when fleeing. She shies away from insidious phenomena of the day and believes that the dust she raises behind her in doing so, as also the abuse which she nervously mutters between her teeth as she flees, will have blinded and confused both the uncomforting phenomena of the day and the comfortable reader.

Hint at Frederick William IV.— Ed.

Or does the lady of Augsburg resent our correspondent’s expectation that the undeniable collision will be setded “in a peaceful way”? Or does she reproach us for not having at once prescribed a proven remedy and supplied the astonished reader with a report as clear as the sun at noon on the solution of the problem which cannot be regarded as a standard one? We have not mastered the art of disposing by a single phrase of problems which two nations are working to solve. But, dearest, most worthy lady of Augsburg, in connection with communism you have given us to understand that Germany at present is poor in people enjoying independence, that nine-tenths of the better-educated youth have to beg bread from the state to assure their future, that our rivers' are neglected, that our shipping is at a standstill, that our once flourishing trading towns lack their former prosperity, that free institutions are achieved very slowly in Prussia, that our surplus population roams helplessly about, ceasing to exist as Germans among foreign nationalities; and for all these problems you offer not a single remedy, make no attempt to become “ clearer about the means for accomplishing” the great deed that should absolve us from all these sins! Or do you expect no peaceful solution? There seems to be almost an indication of this in another article in the same issue, datelined from Karlsruhe,83 which even in regard to the Customs Union addresses the following insidious question to Prussia: “ Can one believe that such a crisis will pass away like a row about smoking tobacco in the Zoological Gardens?" The reason you advance for your lack of belief is a communist one. “Well, then, let a crisis break out in industry, let capital amounting to millions be lost, and thousands of workers find themselves without bread." How inopportune you must have found our “peaceful expectation” once you had decided to allow a bloody crisis to break out, which is no doubt why in your article, in accordance with your own logic, you recommend Great Britain to take note of the demagogic physician, Dr. M’Douall, who emigrated to America because “there was nothing to be done with this royal breed”.84 Before we take leave of you, we should like in passing to call your attention to your own wisdom, since by your method of phrase-making you can hardly avoid now and again, in a harmless way, expressing an idea, although it is not your idea. You find that the polemic of Herr Hennequin from Paris against the parcellation of landed property puts him in surprising harmony with the

autonomists85! Surprise, says Aristotle, is the beginning of philosophising.3 You have come to an end at the beginning. Would otherwise the surprising fact have escaped you that communist principles are being disseminated in Germany not by liberals, but by your reactionary friends? Who is it that talks of artisans’ corporations? The reactionaries. The artisans’ estate, they say, ought to form a state within the state. Do you find it remarkable that such ideas, expressed in modern language, therefore take the form: “The state ought to be turned into an estate of the artisans”? If for the artisan his estate ought to be the state, and if the modern artisan, like every modern person, understands, and can understand, by the state only the sphere common to all his fellow citizens, how can you combine these two ideas except in the idea of an artisans’ state? Who carries on a polemic against parcellation of landed property? The reactionaries. In a quite recent work (Kosegarten on parcellation86) written in a feudalistic spirit, the author goes so far as to call private property a privilege. That is Fourier’s basic principle. Once there is unity on basic principles, cannot there be any dispute over consequences and application? The Rheinische Zeitung, which does not admit that communist ideas in their present form possess even theoretical reality, and therefore can still less desire their practical realisation, or even consider it possible, will subject these ideas to thoroughgoing criticism. But if the lady of Augsburg demanded more, and was capable of more, than smooth-sounding phrases, it would be obvious to her that such writings as those of Leroux, Considerant, and above all the sharp-witted work by Proudhon,6 cannot be criticised on the basis of superficial flashes of thought, but only after long and profound study. We must take such theoretical works the more seriously because we do not agree with the Augsburg newspaper, which finds the “ reality” of communist ideas not in Plato, but in its obscure acquaintance, who was not without merit in some fields of scientific research, but who gave up all he possessed at the time and washed plates and cleaned boots for his comrades in accordance with the wishes of Father Enfantin. We are firmly convinced that the real danger lies not in practical attempts, but in the theoretical elaboration of communist ideas, for practical attempts, even mass attempts, can be answered by cannon as soon as they become dangerous, whereas ideas, which have

a Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book I, Ch. 2 (982b).— Ed.

b P. J. Proudhon, Qu’est-ce que la propriete? — Ed.

conquered our intellect and taken possession of our minds, ideas to which reason has fettered our conscience, are chains from which one cannot free oneself without a broken heart; they are demons which human beings can vanquish only by submitting to them. But the Augsburg newspaper has never known the pangs of conscience called forth by the rebellion of man’s subjective wishes against the objective views of his mind, since it has neither a mind of its own, nor views of its own, nor even a conscience of its own.