[ Deutsche-Briisseler-Zeitung No. 80, October 7, 1847] 

The Communists—this we established in the first article—are 
attacking Heinzen not because he is no Communist, but because 
he is a bad democratic party writer. They are attacking him not in 
their capacity as Communists but in their capacity as democrats. It is 
purely coincidental that it is precisely the Communists who have 
opened the polemic against him; even if there were no Communists 
at all in the world, the democrats would still have to take the field 
against Heinzen. In this whole controversy it is only a question of: 
1. whether Herr Heinzen as a party writer and agitator is capable of 
serving German democracy, which we deny; 2. whether Herr 
Heinzen’s manner of agitation is a correct one, whether it is merely 
tolerable, which we likewise deny. It is therefore a question neither 
of communism nor of democracy, but just of Herr Heinzen’s person 
and his personal eccentricities. 

Far from starting futile quarrels with the democrats, in the present 
circumstances, the Communists for the time being rather take the 
field as democrats themselves in all practical party matters. In all 
civilised countries, democracy has as its necessary consequence the 
political rule of the proletariat, and the political rule of the 
proletariat is the first condition for all communist measures. As long 
as democracy has not been achieved, thus long do Communists and 
democrats fight side by side, thus long are the interests of the 
democrats at the same time those of the Communists. Until that time, 
the differences between the two parties are of a purely theoretical 
nature and can perfectly well be debated on a theoretical level 
without common action being thereby in any way prejudiced. In- 
deed, understandings will be possible concerning many measures 
which are to be carried out in the interests of the previously op- 
pressed classes immediately after democracy has been achieved, 
e.g. the running of large-scale industry and the railways by the 
state, the education of all children at state expense, etc. 

Now to Herr Heinzen. 

Herr Heinzen declares the Communists had begun a quarrel with 
him, not he with them. The well-known argument of the street- 
porter, then, which we will readily concede to him. He calls his 
conflict with the Communists “the absurd split which the Commu- 
nists have provoked in the camp of the German radicals”. He says 
that as long as three years ago he had been concerned to prevent the 
approaching split as far as his powers and circumstances might 
permit. These fruitless exertions were followed, he says, by attacks 
on him by the Communists. 

Herr Heinzen, as everyone perfectly well knows, was not yet in the 
radical camp three years ago. At that time Herr Heinzen was 
progressive-within-the-law and liberal. A split with him was there- 
fore by no means a split in the camp of the radicals. 

Herr Heinzen met some Communists here in Brussels at the 
beginning of 1845. Far from attacking Herr Heinzen for his 
ostensible political radicalism, they rather took the greatest trouble to 
bring the then liberal Herr Heinzen over to just this radicalism. But 
in vain. Herr Heinzen only became a democrat in Switzerland. 

“I later became more and more convinced (!) of the need for a 
vigorous struggle against the Communists”—in other words, of the 
need for an absurd split in the radical camp! We ask the German 
democrats whether someone who contradicts himself so absurdly is 
fitted to be a party writer? 

But who are the Communists by whom Herr Heinzen claims he 
was attacked? The above innuendoes and particularly the ensuing 

reproaches against the Communists show who it was clearly. The 
Communists, we read, 

‘“‘were outshouting the whole camp of the literary opposition, confusing the minds 
of the uneducated, decrying even the most radical men in the most uninhibited 
manner, ... they were intent on paralysing the political struggle as far as possible, ... 
indeed, they were finally positively allying themselves ... even with reaction. Further- 
more they often descended, obviously as a result of their doctrine, to base and false in- 
triguesin practical life...” 

Out of the fog and vagueness of these criticisms looms an easily 
recognisable figure: that of the literary hack, Herr Karl Grun. Three 
years ago Herr Grün had some personal dealings with Herr 
Heinzen, whereupon Herr Grün attacked Herr Heinzen in the 
Trier’sche Zeitung, Herr Grün attempted to outshout the whole camp 
of the literary opposition, Herr Grin strove to paralyse the political 
struggle as far'as possible, etc. 

But since when has Herr Grin been a representative of 
communism? If he thrust himself on the Communists three years 
ago, he has never been recognised as a Communist, he has never 
openly declared himself to be a Communist, and more than a year 
ago he thought it proper to inveigh against the Communists. 

Moreover, even at that time, for Herr Heinzen’s benefit, Marx 
repudiated Herr Grün, just as he later publicly showed him up in his 
true colours at the first opportunity.? 

Concerning Herr Heinzen’s final “base and false” insinuation 
about the Communists, one incident which occurred between Herr 
Grun and Herr Heinzen, and nothing more, lies behind this. This 
incident concerns the two gentlemen in question and not the 
Communists at all. We are not even so exactly acquainted with this 
incident as to be able to pass judgment on it. But let us assume Herr 
Heinzen is in the right. If he then, after Marx and other Communists 
have repudiated his adversary, after it has been shown beyond all 
doubt that his adversary was never a Communist, if Herr Heinzen 
then still presents the incident as a necessary consequence of 
communist doctrine, it is monstrously perfidious of him. 

And furthermore, if in his above reproaches Herr Heinzen has in 
mind persons other than Herr Grün, he can only mean those true 
socialists whose admittedly reactionary theories have long ago been 
repudiated by the Communists. All members of this now completely 

dissolved movement who are capable of learning anything have come 
over to the Communists and are now themselves attacking true 
socialism wherever it still shows itself. Herr Heinzen is thus again 
speaking with his customary crass ignorance when he once more 
disinters these superannuated visions in order to lay them at the 
Communists’ door. Whilst Herr Heinzen here reproaches the true 
socialists, whom he confuses with the Communists, he subsequently 
makes the same nonsensical criticisms of the Communists as the true 
socialists did. He thus has not even the right to attack the true 
socialists, he belongs, in one respect, to them himself. And whilst the 
Communists were writing sharp attacks on these socialists, the same 
Herr Heinzen was sitting in Zurich being initiated by Herr Ruge into 
those fragments of true socialism which had found a niche for 
themselves in the latter’s confused brain. Herr Ruge had indeed 
found a pupil worthy of him! 

But what of the real Communists then? Herr Heinzen speaks of 
honourable exceptions and talented men, of whom he foresees that 
they will reject communist solidarity (!). The Communists have 
already rejected solidarity with the writings and actions of the true 
socialists. Of all the above reproaches, not a single one applies to the 
Communists, unless it be the conclusion of the whole passage, which 
reads as follows: 

“The Communists ... in the arrogance of their imagined superiority laughed to 
scorn everything which is indispensable for forming the basis of an association of 
honourable people.” 

Herr Heinzen appears, to be alluding here to the fact that 
Communists have made fun of his sternly moral demeanour and 
mocked all those sacred and sublime ideas, virtue, justice, morality, 
etc., which Herr Heinzen imagines form the basis of all society. We 
accept this reproach. The Communists will not allow the moral 
indignation of that. honourable man Herr Heinzen to prevent them 
from mocking these eternal verities. The Communists, moreover, 
maintain that these eternal verities are by no means the basis, but on 
the contrary the product, of the society in which they feature. 

If, incidentally, Herr Heinzen foresaw that the Communists would 
reject solidarity with those people he takes it into his head to 
associate with them—what is the point of all his absurd reproaches 
and lying insinuations? If Herr Heinzen only knows the Com- 
munists from hearsay, as almost appears to be the case, if he 
knows so little who they are that he demands they should designate 
themselves more closely, and so to speak introduce themselves to him, 
what brazenness is this he exhibits in polemicising against them? 

“A designation of those ... who ... actually represent communism or manifest it in 
its pure form would ... probably have to exclude completely the vast majority of those 
who base themselves upon communism and are used for it, and it would hardly be the 
people from the Trier’sche Zeitung alone who would protest against the assertion of 
such a claim.” 

And a few lines later: 

“Those who are really Communists now must be allowed the consistency and honesty” 
(what a decent philistine speaks here!) ‘of coming forward and openly professing 
their doctrine and declaring their dissociation from those who are not Communists... 
They are under the moral obligation” (how typical of the philistine these expressions 
are) “not to maintain unscrupulously (!) the confusion which is created in the minds of a 
thousand suffering, uneducated minds by the impossibility (!!), dreamt of or falsely 
advertised as a possibility, of finding a way, based on real conditions, to implement 
that doctrine (!). It is the duty” (the philistine again) “of the real Communists either 
completely to clarify things for all their unenlightened adherents and to lead them toa 
definite goal, or else to detach themselves from them and not to use them.” 

If Herr Ruge had produced these last three periods, he could have 
been well pleased. Entirely matching the philistine demands is the 
philistine confusion of thought, which is concerned only with the 
matter and not with the form and for that very reason says the exact 
opposite of what it wants to say. Herr Heinzen demands that the real 
Communists should detach themselves from the merely seeming 
ones. They should put an end to the confusion which (that is what he 
wants to say) arises from the mixing up of two different trends. But as 
soon as the two words “Communists” and “confusion” collide in his 
mind, confusion arises there too. Herr Heinzen loses the thread; his 
constantly reiterated formula, that the Communists in general are 
confusing the minds of the uneducated, trips him up, he forgets the 
real Communists and the unreal Communists, he stumbles with 
farcical clumsiness over a host of impossibilities dreamt of or falsely 
advertised as possibilities, and finally falls flat on his face on the solid 
ground of real conditions, where he regains his faculty of reflection. 
Now he is reminded that he meant to talk about something quite 
different, that it was not a question of whether this or that was 
possible. He returns to his theme, but is still so dazed that he does 
not even cross out that magnificent sentence in which he executed 
the somersault just described. 

So much for the style. Regarding the matter, we repeat that, 
honest German that he is, Herr Heinzen comes too late with his 
demands, and that the Communists repudiated those true socialists 
long ago. But then we see here once again that the application 
of sly insinuations is by no means irreconcilable with the character of 
a decent philistine. For Herr Heinzen gives it clearly enough to be 

understood that the communist writers are only using the commun- 
ist workers. He says in almost as many words that if these writers 
were to come forward openly with their intentions, the vast majority 
of those who are being used for communism would be excluded 
completely. He regards the communist writers as prophets, priests or 
preachers who possess a secret wisdom of their own but deny it to the 
uneducated in order to keep them on leading-strings. All his decent 
philistine demands that things be clarified for the unenlightened and 
that these persons must not be used, obviously proceed from the 
assumption that the literary representatives of communism have an 
interest in keeping the workers in the dark, as though they were. 
merely using them, just as the Illuminati'?” wished to use the 
common people in the last century. This insipid idea also causes 
Herr Heinzen to burst forth with always inopportune talk about 
confusion in the minds of the uneducated, and compels him, as a 
penalty for not speaking his mind plainly, to perform stylistic 
somersaults. 

We merely take note of these insinuations, we do not take issue 
with them. We leave it to the communist workers to pass judgment 
on them themselves. 

At last, after all these preliminaries, diversions, appeals, insinua- 
tions and somersaults by Herr Heinzen, we come to his theoretical 
attacks on and reflections about the Communists. 

Herr Heinzen 

“discerns the core of the communist doctrine simply in ... the abolition of private 

property (including that earned through labour) and in the principle of the communal 
utilisation of the earth’s riches which follows inescapably from that abolition.” 

Herr Heinzen imagines communism is a certain doctrine which 
proceeds from a definite theoretical principle as its core and draws 
further conclusions from that. Herr Heinzen is very much mistaken. 
Communism is not a doctrine but a movement; it proceeds not from 
principles but from facts. The Communists do not base themselves on 
this or that philosophy as their point of departure but on the whole 
course of previous history and specifically its actual results in the 
civilised countries at the present time. Communism has followed 
from large-scale industry and its consequences, from the establish- 
ment of the world market, of the concomitant uninhibited competi- 
tion, from the ever more violent and more universal trade crises, 
which have already become full-fledged crises of the world market, 
from the creation of the proletariat and the concentration of capital, 
from the ensuing class struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie. 
Communism, insofar as it is a theory, is the theoretical expression of 

the position of the proletariat in this struggle and the theoretical 
summation of the conditions for the liberation of the proletariat. 

Herr Heinzen will now no doubt realise that in assessing 
communism he has to do rather more than discern its core simply in 
the abolition of private property; that he would do better to 
undertake certain studies in political economy than to gabble wildly 
about the abolition of private property; that he cannot know the first 
thing about the consequences of the abolition of private property if he 
does not also know its conditions. 

However, in this respect, Herr Heinzen labours under such gross 
ignorance that he even says “the communal utilisation of the earth’s 
riches” (another fine expression) is the consequence of the abolition of 
private property. Precisely the contrary is the case. Because 
large- -scale industry, the development of machinery, communica- 
tions and world trade are assuming such gigantic proportions that 
their exploitation by individual capitalists is becoming daily more 
impossible; because the mounting crises of the world market are the 
most striking proof of this; because the productive forces and the 
means of exchange which characterise the present mode of 
production and exchange are daily becoming increasingly more than 
individual exchange and private property can manage; because, in a 
word, the moment is approaching when communal management of 
industry, of agriculture and of exchange will become a material 
necessity for industry, agriculture and exchange themselves—for 
this reason private property will be abolished. 

So when Herr Heinzen forcibly separates the abolition of private 
property, which is of course the condition for the liberation of the 
proletariat, from the conditions that attach to it, when he considers it 
quite out of all connection with the real world simply as an 
ivory-tower fantasy, it becomes a pure cliché about which he can only 
talk platitudinous nonsense. This he does as follows: 

“By its above-mentioned casting-off of all private property..., communism 
necessarily also abolishes individual existence.” (So Herr Heinzen is reproaching us for 
wanting to turn people into Siamese twins.) “The consequence of this is once more ... 
the incorporation of each individual into a perhaps (!!) communally organised 
barracks ... economy.” (Would the reader kindly note that this is avowedly only the 
consequence of Herr Heinzen’s own absurd remarks about individual existence.) “By 
these means communism destroys ... individuality ... independence ... freedom.” (The 
same old twaddle as we had from the true socialists and the bourgeoisie. As though 
there was any individuality to be destroyed in the individuals whom the division of 
labour has today turned against their will into cobblers, factory workers, bourgeois, 
lawyers, peasants, in other words, into slaves of a particular form of labour and of the 
mores, way of life, prejudices and blinkered attitudes, etc., that go with that form of 

labour!) “It sacrifices the individual person with its necessary attribute or basis” (that 
“or? is marvellous) “of earned private property to the ‘phantom of the community or 

society’” (is Stirner here as well?), “whereas the community cannot and should not” 
(should not!!) “be the aim but only the means for each individual person.” 

Herr Heinzen attaches particular importance to earned private 
property and in so doing once again proves his crass unfamiliarity 
with the matter on which he is speaking. Herr Heinzen’s philistine 
justice, which allows to each man what he has earned, is unfortunate- 
ly frustrated by large-scale industry. As long as large-scale industry is 
not so far advanced that it frees itself completely from the fetters of 
private property, thus long does it permit no other distribution of its 
products than that at present occurring, thus long will the capitalist 
pocket his profit and the worker increasingly know by practice just 
what a minimum wage is. M. Proudhon attempted to develop a 
system for earned property which would relate it to existing 
conditions, and, we all know, he failed spectacularly. Herr Heinzen, 
it is true, will never risk a similar experiment, for in order to do so 
he would need to study, and he will not do that. But let the example 
of M. Proudhon teach him to expose his earned property less to 
public scrutiny. 

And if Herr Heinzen reproaches the Communists for chasing 
fantasies and failing to keep their feet on the ground of reality—to 
whom does this reproach properly apply? 

Herr Heinzen goes on to say a number of other things which we 
need not enter into. We merely observe that his sentences get worse 
and worse the further he proceeds. The clumsiness of his language, 
which can never find the right word, would of itself suffice to 
discredit any party which acknowledged him as its literary represen- 
tative. The solidity of his conviction constantly makes him say 
something quite different from what he intends to say. Thus each of 
his sentences contains a twofold nonsense: firstly the nonsense he 
intends to say, and secondly the one he doesn’t intend to say but 
nevertheless says. We gave an example of it above. It only remains 
for us to observe that Herr Heinzen repeats his old superstition 
about the power of the princes when he says that the power which 
must be overthrown and which is none other than the power of the 
State, is and always has been the progenitor and’ preserver of all 
injustice, and that his aim is to establish a State really based on justice (!) 
and within this fantasy structure 

“to undertake all those social reforms which have emerged in the course of events 
in general (!), as correct (!) in theory and possible (!) in practice”!!! 

His intentions are as good as his style is bad, and that is the fate of 
the well-meaning in this bad world. 

From seduction by the Zeitgeist, 
Nature-nurtured sansculotte, 
Dancing badly, but yet bearing 
Good intentions in a bosom rough; 

Void of talent, yet a character.” 

Our articles will fill Herr Heinzen with all the righteous indigna- 
tion of an outraged honest philistine, but for all that he is not going 
to give up either his style of writing or his discreditable and 
ineffectual manner of agitation. We found his threat to string us 
up on the nearest lamp-post when the day for action and decision 
comes most entertaining. 

In short: the Communists must co-operate with the German 
radicals and desire to do so. But they reserve the right to attack any 

writer who discredits the entire party. This, and no other, was our 
intention in attacking Heinzen. 

Brussels, October 3, 1847 F. Engels 

N. B. We have just received a pamphlet written by a worker: Der 
Heinzen’sche Staat, eine Kritik von Stephan, Bern, Ratzer. If Herr 
Heinzen wrote half so well as this worker, he might be well satisfied. 
From this pamphlet Herr Heinzen can see clearly enough, amongst 
other things, why the workers want nothing to do with his peasant 
republic. We also observe that this pamphlet is the first written by a 
worker which does not adopt a moral attitude but attempts to trace 
the political struggles of the present back to the struggle of the 
various classes of society with one another.