[THE CONSTITUTIONAL QUESTION IN GERMANY]

I

German socialist literature grows worse from month to month. It
increasingly confines itself to the broad effusions of those true
socialists whose whole wisdom amounts to an amalgam of German
philosophy and German-philistine sentimentality with a few stunted
communist slogans. It exhibits a peacefulness which enables it even
under the censorship to state its most heartfelt opinions. Even the
German police find little in it to take exception to— proof enough
that it belongs not to the progressive, revolutionary elements but to
the stale, reactionary elements in German literature.

To these true socialists belong not only those who term themselves
socialists par excellence, but also the greater part of those writers in
Germany who have accepted the party name of Communists. The
latter indeed are, if possible, even worse.

Under these circumstances, it goes without saying that these
soi-disant communist writers are in no way representative of the
Party of the German Communists. They are neither recognised by
the Party as its literary representatives nor do they represent its interests. On the contrary, they look after quite other interests, they
defend quite other principles, which are opposed in every respect to
those of the Communist Party.

The true socialists, to whom, as we have said, most German
soi-disant communist writers belong, have learnt from the French
Communists that the transition from the absolute monarchy to the
modern representative state in no way abolishes the poverty of the
great mass of the people, but only brings a new class, the bourgeoisie,
to power. They have further learnt from the French Communists
that it is precisely this bourgeoisie which, by means of its capital,
presses most heavily upon the masses, and hence is the opponent par

excellence of the Communists, or socialists respectively, as representatives of the mass of the people. They have not taken the trouble to
compare Germany’s level of social and political development with
that of France, nor to study the conditions actually existing in
Germany upon which all further development depends; hastily and
without long reflection they have transferred their hastily acquired
knowledge to Germany. Had they been Party men who aimed at a
practical, tangible result, who represented particular interests
common to an entire class, they would at least have paid attention to
the way in which the opponents of the bourgeoisie in France, from
the editors of La Réforme to the ultra-Communists, such as in
particular the acknowledged representative of the great mass of the
French proletariat, old Cabet, behave in their polemic against the
bourgeoisie. It should really have struck them that these representatives of the Party not merely engage continually in politics of the day,
but that even towards political measures such as proposals for
electoral reforms, in which the proletariat has no direct interest,
they nevertheless adopt an attitude far removed from sovereign disdain. But our true socialists are not Party men, they are German
theoreticians. They are not concerned with practical interests and
results, but with eternal truth. The interests which they strive to
uphold are the interests of ‘““man”, the results they pursue are
limited to philosophical “achievements”. So they only needed to
bring their new elucidations into harmony with their own
philosophical conscience, in order then to noise abroad before the
whole of Germany that political progress, like all politics, is evil, that
constitutional freedom in particular elevates to the throne the
bourgeoisie, the class most dangerous to the people, and that in
general the bourgeoisie cannot be attacked enough.

In France, the rule of the bourgeoisie has for seventeen years been
more complete than in any other country in the world. The attacks of
the French proletarians, their Party chiefs and literary representatives on the bourgeoisie were therefore attacks on the ruling class, on
the existing political system, they were definitely revolutionary attacks.
How well the ruling bourgeoisie knows this is proven by the countless
press trials and prosecutions of associations, the prohibition of
meetings and banquets, the hundred police chicaneries with which it
‘persecutes the Réformistes and Communists. In Germany, things
are completely different. In Germany the bourgeoisie is not only not
in power, it is even the most dangerous enemy of the existing
governments. For these the diversion mounted by the true socialists
was very opportune. The struggle against the bourgeoisie, which
only too often brought the French Communists imprisonment or

exile, brought our true socialists nothing except the permission to
print. The revolutionary heat in the polemics by the French
proletariat dwindled in the cool breasts of the German theoreticians
to a tepidness satisfying the censorship and in this emasculated state
was a quite welcome ally for the German governments against the
threatening bourgeoisie. True socialism managed to use the most
revolutionary propositions that have ever been framed as a
protective wall for the morass of the German status quo. True
socialism is reactionary through and through.

The bourgeoisie long ago noticed this reactionary tendency of true
socialism. But without further thought they took this trend for
the literary representative also of German communism, and reproached the Communists publicly and privately with merely playing
into the hands of the governments, the bureaucracy, and the nobility
with their polemics against a representative system, trial by jury, freedom of the press, and their clamour against the bourgeoisie.

It is high time that the German Communists disowned the
responsibility imputed to them for the reactionary deeds and desires
of the true socialists. It is high time that the German Communists,
who represent the German proletariat with its very clear, very
tangible needs, broke in the most decisive manner with that literary
clique — for it is nothing more — which does not know itself whom it
represents, and so against its will tumbles into the arms of the
German governments; which believes itself to be “realising man”
and is realising nothing but the deification of the wretched German
philistine. We Communists have in fact nothing in common with the
theoretical phantasms and scruples of conscience of this crafty
company. Our attacks on the bourgeoisie differ as much from those
of the true socialists as from those ofthe reactionary nobles, e. g., the
French legitimists or Young England.*' The German status quo
cannot exploit our attacks in any way, because they are directed still
more against it than against the bourgeoisie. If the bourgeoisie, so to
speak, our natural enemy, is the enemy whose overthrow will bring
our party to power, the German status quo is still more our enemy,
because it stands between the bourgeoisie and us, because it hinders
us from coming to grips with the bourgeoisie. For that reason we do
not exclude ourselves in any way from the great mass of opposition
to the German status quo. We only form its most advanced
section—a section which at the same time through its unconcealed
arriére pensée against the bourgeoisie takes up a quite definite
position.

With the meeting of the Prussian United Diet the struggle against
the German status quo reaches a turning point. On the attitude of

this Diet depends the continuation or the end of the status quo. The
parties in Germany, which are still ‘very vague, confused and
fragmented through ideological subtleties, are thus faced with the
necessity to clarify for themselves what interests they represent, what
tactics they must follow, to demarcate themselves from other parties
and to become practical. The youngest of these parties, the
Communist Party, cannot evade this necessity. It must likewise clarify
for itself its position, its plan of campaign, its means of action, and
the first step to this is to disavow the reactionary socialists who try
to insinuate themselves among the Communists. It can take this step
all the sooner because it is strong enough to refuse assistance from
all allies who would discredit it.

i
THE STATUS QUO AND THE BOURGEOISIE

The status quo in Germany is as follows.

While in France and England the bourgeoisie has become
powerful enough to overthrow the nobility and to raise itself to be
the ruling class in the state, the German bourgeoisie has not yet had
such power. It has indeed a certain influence upon the governments,
but in all cases where there is a collision of interests, this influence
must give way to that of the landed nobility. While in France and
England the towns dominate the countryside, in Germany the
countryside dominates the towns, agriculture dominates trade and
industry. This is the case not only in the absolute, but also in the
constitutional, monarchies of Germany, not only in Austria and
Prussia, but also in Saxony, Württemberg and Baden.

The cause of this is that in its stage of civilisation Germany lags
behind the Western countries. In the latter it is predominantly trade
and industry which provide the mass of the population with their
livelihood, but with us it is agriculture. England exports no
agricultural produce whatever, but is in constant need of supplies
from abroad; France imports at least as much agricultural produce
as it exports, and both countries base their wealth above all on their
exports of industrial products. Germany, on the contrary, exports
few industrial goods, but a great quantity of corn, wool, cattle, etc.
When Germany’s political system was established—in 1815, the
overwhelming importance of agriculture was even greater than now
and it was increased still more at that time by the fact that it was precisely the almost exclusively agricultural parts of Germany that had
participated most zealously in the overthrow of the French Empire.

The political representative of agriculture is, in Germany as in
most European countries, the nobility, the class of big landed
proprietors. The political system corresponding to the exclusive
dominance of the nobility is the feudal system. The feudal system has
everywhere declined in the same degree in which agriculture has
ceased to be the decisive branch of production in a country, in the
same degree in which an industrial class has formed itself beside the
agricultural, towns beside villages.

The class newly forming itself beside the nobility and the peasants
more or less dependent on it is not the bourgeoisie, which today rules
in the civilised countries and is striving for mastery in Germany; it is
the class of the petty bourgeoisie.

The present political system of Germany is nothing more than a
compromise between the nobility and the petty bourgeoisie, which
amounts to resigning power into the hands of a third class: the
bureaucracy. In the composition of this class the two high
contracting parties participate according to their respective status;
the nobility, which represents the more important branch of
production, reserves to itself the higher positions, the petty
bourgeoisie contents itself with the lower and only in exceptional
circumstances puts forward candidates for the higher administration. Where the bureaucracy is subjected to direct control, as in the
constitutional states of Germany, the nobility and petty bourgeoisie
share in it in the same way; and that here also the nobility reserves to
itself the lion’s share is easily understood. The petty bourgeoisie can
never overthrow the nobility, nor make itself equal to it; it can do no
more than weaken it. To overthrow the nobility, another class is
required, with wider interests, greater property and more determined courage: the bourgeoisie.

In all countries the bourgeoisie emerges from the petty bourgeoisie with the development of world trade and large-scale industry,
with the accompanying free competition and centralisation of
property. The petty bourgeoisie represents inland and coastal trade,
handicrafts, manufacture based on handwork—branches of industry
which operate within a limited area, require little capital, have a slow
turnover and give rise to only local and sluggish competition. The
bourgeoisie represents world trade, the direct exchange of products
of all regions, trade in money, large factory industry based on the use
of machinery—branches of production which demand the greatest
possible area, the greatest possible capital and the quickest possible
turnover, and give rise to universal and stormy competition. The
petty bourgeois represents local, the bourgeois general interests.
The petty bourgeois finds his position sufficiently safeguarded if,

while exercising indirect influence on state legislation, he participates directly in provincial administration and is master of his local
municipality. The bourgeois cannot protect his interests without
direct, constant control of the central administration, foreign policy
and legislation of his state. The classical creation of the petty
bourgeoisie were the free cities of the German Reich, that of the
bourgeoisie is the French representative state. The petty bourgeois is
conservative as soon as the ruling class makes a few concessions to
him; the bourgeois is revolutionary until he himself rules.

What then is the attitude of the German bourgeoisie to the two
classes that share political rule?

While a rich and powerful bourgeoisie has been formed in
England since the seventeenth and in France since the eighteenth
century, one can speak of a German bourgeoisie only since the
beginning of the nineteenth century. There were before then, it is
true, a few rich shipowners in the Hanseatic towns, a few rich
bankers in the interior, but no class of big capitalists, and least of all
of big industrial capitalists. The creator of the German bourgeoisie
was Napoleon. His continental system and the freedom of trade
made necessary by its pressure in Prussia gave the Germans a
manufacturing industry and expanded their mining industry. After
a few years these new or expanded branches of production were
already so important, and the bourgeoisie created by them so
influential, that by 1818 the Prussian government saw that it was
necessary to allow them protective tariffs. The Prussian Customs
Act of 1818 was the first official recognition of the bourgeoisie by the
government. It was admitted, though reluctantly and with a heavy
heart, that the bourgeoisie had become a class indispensable for the
country. The next concession to the bourgeoisie was the Customs
Union.” The admission of most of the German states into the
Prussian customs system was no doubt originally occasioned simply
by fiscal and political considerations, but no one benefited from it as
much as did the German, more especially the Prussian, bourgeoisie.
Although the Customs Union here and there brought a few small
advantages to the nobility and petty bourgeoisie, on the whole it
harmed both groups still more through the rise of the bourgeoisie,
keener competition and the supplanting of the previous means of
production. Since then the bourgeoisie, especially in Prussia, has
developed rather quickly. Although its advance during the last thirty
years has not been nearly as great as that of the English and French
bourgeoisie, it has nevertheless established most branches of modern
industry, in a few districts supplanted peasant or petty-bourgeois
patriarchalism, concentrated capital to some extent, produced

something of a proletariat, and built fairly long stretches of railroad.
It has at least reached the point of having either to go further and
make itself the ruling class or to renounce its previous conquests, the
point where it is the only class that can at the moment bring about
progress in Germany, can at the moment rule Germany. It is already
in fact the leading class in Germany, and its whole existence depends
upon its becoming legally so as well.

With the rise of the bourgeoisie and its growing influence
coincides, indeed, the growing impotence of the hitherto official
ruling classes. The nobility has become more and more impoverished and encumbered with debts since the time of Napoleon. The
buying free from corvée raised the production costs of corn for the
nobility and exposed it to competition from a new class of independent small peasants—disadvantages which in the long run were
far from being compensated for by the peasants overreaching
themselves when they bought themselves free. Russian and American competition limited the market for its corn, Australian and in
some years South Russian that of its wool. And the more the production costs and competition increased, the more was exposed the
incapacity of the nobility to work its estates profitably, and to apply
the newest advances in agriculture. Like the French and English
nobility of the last century, the German nobility employed the rising
level of civilisation only to squander its fortune magnificently on
pleasures in the big cities. Between the nobility and the bourgeoisie
began that competition in social and intellectual education, in wealth
and display, which everywhere precedes the political dominance of
the bourgeoisie and ends, like every other form of competition, with
the victory of the richer side. The provincial nobility turned into a
Court nobility, only thereby to be ruined all the more quickly and
surely. The three per cent revenues of the nobility went down before
the fifteen per cent profit of the bourgeoisie, the three-per-centers
resorted to mortgages, to credit banks for the nobility and so on, in
order to be able to spend in accordance with their station, and only
ruined themselves so much the quicker. The few landed gentry wise
enough not to ruin themselves formed with the newly-emerging
bourgeois landowners a new class of industrial landowners. This class
carries on agriculture without feudal illusions and without the
nobleman’s nonchalance, as a business, an industry, with the
bourgeois appliances of capital, expert knowledge and work. Such a
class is so far from being incompatible with the rule of the
bourgeoisie that in France it stands quite peacefully alongside it and
participates according to its wealth in its rule. It constitutes the
section of the bourgeoisie which exploits agriculture.

The nobility has therefore become so impotent, that a part of it has
already gone over to the bourgeoisie.

The petty bourgeoisie was already in a weak position in relation to
the nobility; still less can it hold out against the bourgeoisie. Next to
the peasants, it is the most pathetic class that has ever meddled with
history. With its petty local interests, it advanced no further even in
its heyday (the later Middle Ages) than to local organisations, local
struggles and local advances, to an existence on sufferance alongside
the nobility, never to general, political, dominance. With the
emergence of the bourgeoisie it loses even the appearance of historical
initiative. Wedged in between nobility and bourgeoisie, under
pressure alike from the political preponderance of the former and
from the competition of the heavy capital of the latter, it split into
two sections. The one, that of the richer and big-city petty
bourgeoisie, joins the revolutionary bourgeoisie more or less timidly;
the other, recruited from the poorer burghers, especially those of
the small provincial towns, clings to the existing state of things and
supports the nobility with the whole weight of its inertia. The more
the bourgeoisie develops, the worse becomes the position of the petty
bourgeoisie. Gradually this second section also realises that under
existing conditions its ruin is certain, whereas under the rule of the
bourgeoisie, alongside the probability of that ruin, it enjoys at least the
possibility of advancing into the ranks of the bourgeoisie. The more
certain its ruin, the more it ranges itself under the banner of the
bourgeoisie. As soon as the bourgeoisie has come to power, the petty
bourgeoisie splits again. It supplies recruits to every section of the
bourgeoisie, and besides forms, between the bourgeoisie and the
proletariat now emerging with its interests and demands, a chain of
more or less radical political and socialist sects, which one can study
more closely in the English or French Chamber of Deputies and the
daily press. The more sharply the bourgeoisie penetrates into the
undisciplined and poorly armed swarms of petty bourgeoisie with
the heavy artillery of its capital, with the closed columns of its
joint-stock companies, the more helpless the petty bourgeoisie
becomes, the more disorderly its flight, until no other way of escape
remains to it than either to muster behind the long files of the
proletariat and to march under its banner—or to surrender to the
bourgeoisie at its discretion. This diverting spectacle can be observed
in England at every trade crisis, and in France at the present
moment. In Germany we have only arrived at that phase when the
petty bourgeoisie in a moment of despair and squeezed for money
forms the heroic resolution to renounce the nobility and place its
trust in the bourgeoisie.

The petty bourgeoisie is therefore just as little able as the nobility
to raise itself to be the ruling class in Germany; on the contrary, it
places itself every day more and more under the command of the
bourgeoisie.

There remain the peasants and the propertyless classes.

The peasants, among whom we include here only the small
peasant tenants or proprietors, with the exclusion of the day labourers and farm labourers—the peasants form a similarly helpless
class as do the petty bourgeoisie, from whom, however, they differ to
their advantage through their greater courage. But they are similarly
incapable of all historical initiative. Even their emancipation from
the fetters of serfdom comes about only under the protection of the
bourgeoisie. Where the absence of nobility and bourgeoisie allows
them to rule, as in the mountain cantons of Switzerland and in
Norway, pre-feudal barbarisms, local narrow-mindedness, and dull,
fanatical bigotry, loyalty and rectitude rule with them. Where, as in
Germany, the nobility continues to exist beside them, they are
squeezed, just like the petty bourgeoisie, between the nobility and
the bourgeoisie. To protect the interests of agriculture against the
growing power of trade and industry, they must join with the
nobility. To safeguard themselves against the overwhelming competition of the nobility and especially the bourgeois landowners, they
must join with the bourgeoisie. To which side they finally adhere
depends upon the nature of their property. The big farmers of
eastern Germany, who themselves exercise a certain feudal dominance over their farm labourers, are in all their interests too closely
involved with the nobles to dissociate themselves from them in
earnest. The small landowners in the west who have emerged from
the breaking up of the estates of the nobility, and the small farmers
in the east who are subject to patrimonial jurisdiction and still partly
liable to corvée labour, are oppressed too directly by the nobles or
stand too much in opposition to them not to adhere to the side of the
bourgeoisie. That this is actually the case is proved by the Prussian
provincial diets.

- Rule by the peasants is also, therefore, fortunately unthinkable.
The peasants themselves think of it so little that they have for the
greatest part already placed themselves at the disposal of the
bourgeoisie.

And the propertyless, in common parlance the working, classes?
We shall soon speak of them at greater length; for the moment it is
sufficient to point to the division among them. This division into
farm labourers, day labourers, handicraft journeymen, factory
workers and lumpen proletariat, together with their dispersal over a

great, thinly populated expanse of country with few and weak
central points, already renders it impossible for them to realise that
their interests are common, to reach understanding, to constitute
themselves into one class. This division and dispersal makes nothing
else possible for them but restriction to their immediate, everyday
interests, to the wish for a good wage for good work. That is, it
restricts the workers to seeing their interest in that of their
employers, thus making every single section of the workers into an
auxiliary army for the class employing them. The farm labourer and
day labourer supports the interests of the noble or farmer on whose
estate he works. The journeyman stands under the intellectual and
political sway of his master. The factory worker lets himself be used
by the factory owner in the agitation for protective tariffs. For a
few talers the lumpen proletarian fights out with his fists the squabbles
between bourgeoisie, nobility and police. And where two
classes of employers have contradictory interests to assert, there
exists the same struggle between the classes of workers they employ.

So little is the mass of the workers in Germany prepared to assume
the leadership in public matters. :

To summarise. The nobility is too much in decline, the petty
bourgeoisie and peasants are, by their whole position in life, too
weak, the workers are still far from sufficiently mature to be able to
come forward as the ruling class in Germany. There remains only
the bourgeoisie.

The poverty of the German status quo consists chiefly in this: no
single class has hitherto been strong enough to establish its branch of
production as the national branch of production par excellence and
thus to set itself up as the representative of the interests of the whole
nation. All the estates and classes that have emerged in history since
the tenth century: nobles, serfs, peasants subject to corvée labour,
free peasants, petty bourgeoisie, journeymen, manufactory workers,
bourgeoisie and proletarians, all exist alongside one another. Those
among these estates and classes who in consequence of their property represent a branch of production, namely the nobles, free
peasants, petty bourgeoisie and bourgeoisie, have participated in
political rule in proportion to their number, their wealth, and their
share in the total production of the country. The result of this
division is that, as we have said, the nobility has got the lion’s share,
the petty bourgeoisie the smaller share, and that officially the
bourgeoisie count only as petty bourgeoisie and the peasants as
peasants do not count at all, because they, with the slight influence
they possess, divide themselves between the other classes. This
regime represented by the bureaucracy is the political summing-up

of the general impotence and contemptibility, of the dull boredom
and the sordidness of German society. It is matched by the breaking
up of Germany into thirty-eight local and provincial states together
with the breaking up of Austria and Prussia into autonomous
provinces from within and by the disgraceful helplessness against
exploitation and kicks from without. The cause of this general
poverty lies in the general lack of capital. In poverty-stricken
Germany every single class has borne from the beginning the mark
of civic mediocrity, and in comparison with the same classes in other
countries has been poor and depressed. How petty bourgeois
appears the high and low German nobility since the twelfth century
beside the rich and carefree French and English nobility, so full of
the joy of living and so purposeful in their whole behaviour! How
tiny, how insignificant and parochial appear the burghers of the
German free cities of the Reich and the Hanseatic towns beside the
rebellious Parisian burghers of the fourteenth and _ fifteenth
centuries, the London Puritans of the seventeenth century! How
petty bourgeois still appear our principal magnates in industry,
finance, shipping, beside the Stock Exchange princes of Paris,
Lyons, London, Liverpool and Manchester! Even the working classes
in Germany are thoroughly petty bourgeois. Thus the petty bourgeoisie have at least the consolation in their depressed social and
political position of being the standard class of Germany; and of
having imparted to all other classes their specific depression and
their concern over their existence.

How 1s this poverty to be overcome? Only one way is possible: one
class must become strong enough to make the rise of the whole
nation dependent upon its rise, to make the advancement of the
interests of all other classes dependent upon the advancement and
development of its interests. The interest of this one class must
become for the time being the national interest, and this class itself
must become for the time being the representative of the nation.
From that moment, this class and with it the majority of the nation,
finds itself in contradiction with the political status quo. The political
status quo corresponds to a state of affairs which has ceased to
exist: to the conflict of interests of the different classes. The new interests find themselves restricted, and even a part of the classes in
whose favour the status quo was established no longer sees its own
interests represented in it. The abolition of the status quo, peacefully or by force, is the necessary consequence. In its place enters
dominance by the class which for the moment represents the
majority of the nation, and under whose rule a new development

begins.

As the lack of capital is the basis of the status quo, of the general
weakness, so possession of capital, its concentration in the hands of
one class, can alone give this class the power to supplant the status quo.

Does this class, which can overthrow the status quo, exist now in
Germany? It exists, although, compared with the corresponding
class in England and France, in a perhaps very petty bourgeois way;
but still it exists and, indeed, in the bourgeoisie.

The bourgeoisie is the class which in all countries overthrows the
compromise established between nobility and petty bourgeoisie in
the bureaucratic monarchy, and thus to begin with conquers power
for itself.

The bourgeoisie is the only class in Germany which at least gives a
great part of the industrial landowners, petty bourgeoisie, peasants,
workers and even a minority among the nobles a share in its
interests, and has united these under its banner.

The party of the bourgeoisie is the only one in Germany that
definitely knows with what it must replace the status quo; the only
one that does not limit itself to abstract principles and historical
deductions, but wishes to carry into effect very definite, concrete and
immediately practicable measures; the only one which is at least
organised to some extent on a local and provincial basis and has a
sort of plan of campaign, in short, it is the party which fights first and
foremost against the status quo and is directly interested in its
overthrow.

The party of the bourgeoisie is therefore the only one that at
present has a chance of success.

The only question then is: Is the bourgeoisie compelled by
necessity to conquer political rule for itself through the overthrow of
the status quo, and is it strong enough, given its own power and the
weakness of its opponents, to overthrow the status quo?

We shall see.

The decisive section of the German bourgeoisie are the factory
owners. On the prosperity of industry depends the prosperity of the
whole domestic trade, of the Hamburg and Bremen and, to some
extent, Stettin sea trade, of banking; on it depend the revenues of
the railways, and with that the most significant part of the Stock
Exchange business. Independent of industry are only the corn and
wool exporters of the Baltic towns and the insignificant class of
importers of foreign industrial products. The needs of the factory
owners thus represent the needs of the whole bourgeoisie and of the
classes at present dependent upon it.

The factory owners are further divided into two sections: the one
gives the initial processing to raw materials and sends them into

trade half-finished, the other takes over the half-finished materials
and brings them to market as finished commodities. To the first
group belong the spinners, to the second the weavers. In Germany
the first section also includes the iron producers.a

to introduce newly invented techniques, to establish good
communications, to obtain cheap machines and raw materials, to
train skilled workers, requires an entire industrial system; it requires
the interlocking of all branches of industry, sea-ports which are
tributary to the industrial interior and carry on a flourishing trade.
All this has long ago been proved by the economists. But such an
industrial system requires also nowadays, when England is almost the
only country that has no competition to fear, a complete protective
system embracing all branches of industry threatened by foreign
competition, and modifications to this system must always be made
according to the position of industry. Such a system the existing
Prussian Government cannot give, nor can all the governments of the
Customs Union. It can only be set up and operated by the ruling
bourgeoisie itself. And for this reason also the German bourgeoisie
can no longer do without political power.

Such a protective system, moreover, is all the more necessary in
Germany, since there manufacture lies in its death throes. Without
systematic tariff protection the competition of English machinery
will kill manufacture, and the bourgeoisie, petty bourgeoisie and
workers hitherto maintained by it will be ruined. Reason enough for
_the German bourgeoisie to ruin what remains of manufacture rather
with German machines.

Protective tariffs are therefore necessary for the German
bourgeoisie and only by that bourgeoisie itself can they be
introduced. If only for that reason, then, it must seize state power.

But it is not only by insufficient tariffs that the factory owners
are hindered in the complete utilisation of their capital; they are also
hindered by the bureaucracy. If in the matter of customs legislation
they meet with indifference from the government, in their relations
with the bureaucracy they meet with its most direct hostility.

The bureaucracy was set up to govern petty bourgeoisie and
peasants. These classes, dispersed in small towns or villages, with
interests which do not reach beyond the narrowest local boundaries,
have necessarily the restricted horizons corresponding to their
restricted mode of life. They cannot govern a large state, they can
have neither the breadth of vision nor the knowledge to balance the
different conflicting interests. And it was exactly at that stage of

2 Here four pages of the manuscript are missing.—Ed.

civilisation when the petty bourgeoisie was most flourishing that the
different interests were most complicatedly intertwined (one need
only think of the guilds and their conflicts). The petty bourgeoisie
and the peasants cannot, therefore, do without a powerful and
numerous bureaucracy. They must let themselves be kept in leading
strings so as to escape the greatest confusion, and not to ruin
themselves with hundreds and thousands of lawsuits.

But the bureaucracy, which is a necessity for the petty bourgeoisie,
very soon becomes an unbearable fetter for the bourgeoisie. Already
at the stage of manufacture official supervision and interference
become very burdensome; factory industry is scarcely possible under
such control. The German factory owners have hitherto kept the
bureaucracy off their backs as much as possible by bribery, for which
they can certainly not be blamed. But this remedy frees them only
from the lesser half of the burden; apart from the impossibility of
bribing all the officials with whom a factory owner comes into
contact, bribery does not free him from perquisites, honorariums to
jurists, architects, mechanics, nor from other expenses caused by the
system of supervision, nor from extra work and waste of time. And
the more industry develops, the more “conscientious officials”
appear—that is, officials who either from pure narrow-mindedness
or from bureaucratic hatred of the bourgeoisie, pester the factory
owners with the most infuriating chicaneries.

The bourgeoisie, therefore, is compelled to break the power of this
indolent and pettifogging bureaucracy. From the moment the state
administration and legislature fall under the control of the
bourgeoisie, the independence of the bureaucracy ceases to ext;
indeed from this moment, the tormentors of the bourgeoisie turn
into their humble slaves. Previous regulations and decrees, which
served only to lighten the work of the officials at the expense of the
industrial bourgeoisie, give place to new regulations which lighten
the work of the industrialists at the expense of the officials.

The bourgeoisie is all the more compelled to do this as soon as
possible because, as we have seen, all its sections are directly
concerned in the quickest possible increase of factory industry, and
factory industry cannot possibly grow under a regime of bureaucratic harassment.

The subordination of the customs and the bureaucracy to the
interest of the industrial bourgeoisie are the two measures with the
implementation of which the bourgeoisie is most directly concerned.
But that does not by any means exhaust its needs. The bourgeoisie 1s
compelled to subject the whole system of legislation, administration
and justice in almost all the German states to a thoroughgoing

revision, for this whole system serves to maintain and uphold a social
condition which the bourgeoisie is continually working to overthrow.
The conditions under which nobility and petty bourgeoisie can exist
side by side are absolutely different from the conditions of life of the
bourgeoisie, and only the former are officially recognised in the
German states. Let us take the Prussian status quo as an example. If
the petty bourgeoisie could subject themselves to the judicial as well
as to the administrative bureaucracy, if they could entrust their
property and persons to the discretion and torpidity of an
“independent”, i. e., bureaucratically self-sufficient judicial class,
which in return offered them protection against the encroachments
of the feudal nobility and at times also against those of the
administrative bureaucracy, the bourgeoisie cannot do so. For
lawsuits concerning property the bourgeoisie requires at least the
protection of publicity, and for criminal trials moreover that of the
jury as well, the constant control of justice through a deputation of
the bourgeoisie—The petty bourgeois can put up with the
exemption of nobles and officials from common legal procedure
because his official humiliation in this way fully corresponds to his
lower social status. The bourgeois, who must either be ruined or
make his class the first in society and state, cannot do this.—The
petty bourgeois can, without prejudice to the smooth course of his
way Of life, leave legislation on landed property to the nobility alone;
in fact he must, since he has enough to do to protect his own urban
interests from the influence and encroachment of the nobles. The
bourgeois cannot in any way leave the regulation of property relationships in the countryside to the discretion of the nobility, for the
complete development of his own interests requires the fullest
possible industrial exploitation of agriculture too, the creation of a
class of industrial farmers, free saleability and mobilisation of landed property. The need of the landowner to procure money on
mortgage gives to the bourgeois here an opportunity and forces the
nobility to allow the bourgeoisie, at least in relation to the mortgage
laws, to influence legislation concerning landed property.—If the
petty bourgeois, with his small scale of business, his slow turnover
and his limited number of customers concentrated in a small area,
has not found the miserable old Prussian legislation on trade too
oppressive but has even been grateful for the bit of protection it
provided, the bourgeois cannot bear it any longer. The petty bourgeois, whose highly simple transactions are seldom dealings between
merchant and merchant, but almost always only sales from retailer or
producer direct to consumer—the petty bourgeois seldom goes
bankrupt and easily accommodates himself to the old Prussian

bankruptcy laws. According to these laws, debts on bills are paid off
from total assets before book debts, but customarily the whole assets
are devoured by court costs. The laws are framed first of all in the
interests of the judicial:bureaucracy who administer the assets, and
then in the interests of the non-bourgeois as opposed to the
bourgeois. The noble in particular, who draws or receives bills on the
purchaser or consignee of the corn he has dispatched, is thereby
covered, and so are in general all those who have something to sell
only once a year and draw the proceeds of that sale in a single
transaction. Among those engaged in trade, the bankers and
wholesalers are again protected, but the factory owner is rather
neglected. The bourgeois, whose dealings are only from merchant to
merchant, whose customers are scattered, who receives bills on the
whole world, who must move in the midst of a highly complicated
system of transactions, who is involved at every moment in a
bankruptcy—the bourgeois can only be ruined by these absurd
laws.—The petty bourgeois is interested in the general policy of his
country only in so far as he wants to be left in peace; his narrow
round of life makes him incapable of surveying the relations of state
to state. The bourgeois, who has to deal or to compete with the most
distant countries, cannot work his way up without the most direct influence on the foreign policy of his state——The petty bourgeois
could let the bureaucracy and nobility levy taxes on him, for the same
reasons that he subjected himself to the bureaucracy; the bourgeois
has a quite direct interest in having the public burdens so distributed
that they affect his profit as little as possible.

In short, if the petty bourgeois can content himself with opposing
to the nobility and the bureaucracy his inert weight, with securing for
himself influence on the official power through his vis inertiae,* the
bourgeois cannot do this. He must make his class dominant, his
interests crucial, in legislation, administration, justice, taxation and
foreign policy. The bourgeoisie must develop itself to the full, daily
expand its capital, daily reduce the production costs of its
commodities, daily expand its trade connections and markets, daily
improve its communications, in order not to be ruined. The competition
on the world market compels it to do so. And to be able to develop
freely and to the full, what it requires is precisely political
dominance, the subordination of all other interests to its own.

That in order not to be ruined the German bourgeoisie requires
political dominance now, we have shown above in connection with the
question of protective tariffs and with its attitude to the bureaucracy.

* Force of inertia.— Ed.

But the most striking proof of this is the present state of the German
money and commodity market.

The prosperity of English industry in 1845 and the railway
speculations to which it led had on this occasion a stronger effect on
France and Germany than at any earlier lively period of business.
The German factory owners did good business, which stimulated
German business in general. The agricultural districts found a willing market for their corn in England. The general prosperity
enlivened the money market, facilitated credit and attracted on to
the market a large number of small amounts of capital, of which in
Germany there were so many lying half idle. As in England and
France, only somewhat later and in somewhat—

Vol. V, Moscow, 1929 and in German in: time

Marx/Engels, Gesamtausgabe, Erste Abteilung, Bd. 6, Berlin, 1932

* Here the manuscript breaks off.— Ed.