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 in- 
terests. 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 representa- 
tives 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 representa- 
tives 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 dis- 
dain. 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 representa- 
tives 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 

The Constitutional Question in Germany 77 

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 re- 
proached 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, free- 
dom 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 pre- 
cisely the almost exclusively agricultural parts of Germany that had 
participated most zealously in the overthrow of the French Empire. 

The Constitutional Question in Germany 79 

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 administra- 
tion. 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 deter- 
mined courage: the bourgeoisie. 

In all countries the bourgeoisie emerges from the petty bourgeoi- 
sie 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 partici- 
pates 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 

The Constitutional Question in Germany 81 

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 impover- 
ished 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 inde- 
pendent 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 Ameri- 
can competition limited the market for its corn, Australian and in 
some years South Russian that of its wool. And the more the pro- 
duction 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 Constitutional Question in Germany 83 

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 labour- 
ers 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 compe- 
tition 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 domi- 
nance 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 prop- 
erty 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 

The Constitutional Question in Germany 85 

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 bour- 
geoisie 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 in- 
terests 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, peace- 
fully 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 

The Constitutional Question in Germany 87 

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 bureau- 
cratic 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 

The Constitutional Question in Germany 89 

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 rela- 
tionships 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 land- 
ed 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 bour- 
geois, 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 in- 
fluence 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. 

The Constitutional Question in Germany 91 

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 will- 
ing 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—