Friedrich Engels 
The Workingmen of Europe in 1877 

The Labor Standard. 
Nr. 43,3. März 1878 

The Workingmen of Europe in 1877. 

By Frederick Engels. 

I. 

The past year has been an eventful and a fruitful one for the Working Class 
of Europe. Great progress has been made in almost all countries with regard 
to the organization and extension of a Workingmen's Party; unity, threatened 
at one time by a small but active sect, has been virtually restored; the work- 
ing-class movement has forced itself more and more into the foreground 
of every-day politics, and, a sure sign of approaching triumph, political 
events, no matter what turn they took, always turned out, in some way or 
other, favorable to the progress of that movement. 
At its very outset, the year 1877 was inaugurated by one of the greatest 
victories ever gained by working men. On the 10th of January, the triennial 
elections, by universal suffrage, for the German Parliament (Reichstag) took 
place; elections which, ever since 1867, have given the German Work- 
ingmen's Party an opportunity of counting their strength and parading before 
the world their well organized and ever increasing battalions. In 1874, four 
hundred thousand votes fell to the candidates of labor; in 1877, more than 
six hundred thousand. Ten workingmen candidates were elected onthe 10th, 
while twenty-four more had to be ballotted for in the supplementary elections 
which took place a fortnight after. Of these twenty-four, only a few were 
actually returned, all other parties uniting against them. But the important 
fact remained, that in all the large towns and industrial centres of the Empire 
the working-class movement had advanced with giant strides, and that all 
these electoral districts were certain to fall into their hands at the next 

Friedrich Engels 

balloting in 1880. Berlin, Dresden, the whole of the Saxon manufacturing 
districts, and Solingen had been conquered; in Hamburg, Breslau, Nurem- 
berg, Leipzig, Brunswick, in Schleswig-Holstein and the manufacturing 
districts of Westfalia and the Lower Rhine, a coalition of allthe parties had 
scarcely sufficed to defeat the working class candidates by bare majorities. 

German democratic socialism was a power, and a rapidly growing one, with 
which henceforth all other powers in the country, governing or otherwise, 
would have to reckon. The effect of these elections was enormous. The 
middle class were seized with a perfect panic, all the more so as their press 
had constantly represented social democracy as dwindling down into in- 

significance. The working class, elated at their own victory, continued the 
struggle with renewed vigor and upon every available battlefield; while the 
workingmen of other countries, as we shall see, not only celebrated the 
victory of the Germans as a triumph of their own, but were stimulated by 
it to fresh exertions in order not to be left behind in the race for the emancipa- 

tion of labor. 

The rapid progress of the Workingmen's Party in Germany is not bought 
without considerable sacrifices on the part of those who take a more active 
part in it. Government prosecutions and sentences of fine, and oftener of 
imprisonment, hail down upon them, and they have long since had to make 
up their minds to passing the greater part of their lives in prison. Although 
most of these sentences are for short terms, a couple of weeks to three 
months, long terms are by no means of rare infliction. Thus, in order to 
protect the important mining and manufacturing district of Saarbrucken from 
the infection by social democratic poison, two agitators have recently been 
sentenced to two years and a half each, for having ventured upon this forbid- 
den ground. The elastic laws of the Empire offer plenty of pretexts for such 
measures, and where they are not sufficient, the judges are mostly quite 
willing to stretch them to the point required for a conviction. 

A great advantage to the German movement is that the Trades' organiza- 
tion works hand in hand with the political organization. The immediate 
advantages offered by the Trades' organization draw many an otherwise 
indifferent man into the political movement, while the community of political 
action holds together, and assures mutual support to, the otherwise isolated 
Trades Unions. 

The success obtained in the elections to the German Parliament has en- 
couraged our German friends to try their chance on other electoral fields. 
Thus, in two of the State Parliaments, in the smaller States of the Empire, 
they have succeeded in electing workingmen, and have also penetrated into 
a good many Town Councils; inthe Saxon manufacturing districts, many a 
town is governed by a social democratic Council. The suffrage being restrict- 

The Labor Standard. New York. Nr. 43, 3. März 1878. Titelkopf und Seite 2 
mit dem Artikel „The Workingmen of Europe in 1877" 
von Friedrich Engels. 

The Workingmen of Europe in 1877 

ed in these elections, no greatresultcan be hoped for; still, every seat carried, 
helps to prove to the governments and the middle class that henceforth they 
will have to reckon with the workingmen. 

But the best proof of the rapid advance of conscious working-class organi- 
zation is in the growing number of its periodical organs in the press. And 
here we have to overstep the boundaries of Bismarck's "Empire," for the 
influence and action of German social democracy is no ways limited by 
these. There were publishing in the German language on the 31st of De- 
cember 1877, in all, not less than seventy-five periodicals in the service of 
the Workingmen's Party. Of these in the German Empire 62 (amongst which 
15 organs of as many Trades Unions), in Switzerland 3, in Austria 3, Hun- 
gary 1, America 6; 75 in all, more than the number of workingmen's organs 
in all other languages put together. 

After the battle of Sedan, in September 1870, the Executive Committee 

of the German Workingmen's Party told their constituents thatby the results 
of the war the centre of gravity of the European working-class movement 
had been shifted from France to Germany, and that the German workmen 
had thus become invested with a higher trust and with new responsibilities 
which required on their part renewed exertions. The year 1877 has proved 
the truth of this, and has proved, at the same time, the proletariate of 
Germany to have been in no wise inferior to the taskof temporary leadership 
imposed upon it. Whatever mistakes some of the leaders may have made— 
and they are both numerous and manifold—the masses themselves have 
marched onwards resolutely, unhesitatingly and in the right direction. Their 
conduct, organization and discipline, form a marked contrast to the weak- 
ness, irresolution, servility and cowardice so characteristic of all middle- 
class movements in Germany. But while the German middle class has closed 
its career by sinking down into a more than Byzantine adulation of "William 
the Victorious" and by surrendering itself, bound hand and foot to the 
wayward will of the one Bismarck, the working class is marching from vic- 
tory to victory, helped onwards and strengthened even by the very meas- 
ures which government and middle class contrive in order to suppress it. 

The Labor Standard. 

i Nr. 44, 10. Marz 1878 

Great as was the effect of the German elections in the country itself, it was 
far greater abroad. And in the first instance, it restored that harmony to the 

Friedrich Engels 

European working-class movement which had been disturbed, for the last 
six years, by the pretensions of a small but extremely busy sect. 

Those of our readers who have followed the history of the International 
Workingmen's Association, will recollect, that, immediately after the fall of 
the Paris Commune, there arose dissensions in the midst of the great labor 
organization, which led to an open split, at the Hague Congress 1872 andto 
consequent disintegration. These dissensions were caused by a Russian, 
Bakounine and his followers, pretending to supremacy, by fair means or by 
foul, over a body of which they formed but a small minority. Their chief 
nostrum was an objection, on principle, to all political action on the part of 
the working class; so much so, that in their eyes, to vote at an election, was 
to commit an act of treason against the interests of the proletariat. Nothing, 
but downright, violent revolution would they admit as means of action. From 
Switzerland, where these "anarchists" as they called themselves, had first 
taken root, they spread to Italy and Spain, where, for a time, they actually 
dominated the working-class movement. They were more or less supported, 
within the "International," by the Belgians, who, though from different 
motives, also declared in favor of political abstention. After the split they 
kept up a show of organization and held congresses, in which a couple of 
dozen men, always the same, pretending to represent the working class of 
all Europe, proclaimed their dogmas in its name. But already the German 
elections of 1874, and the great advantage which the German movement 
experienced from the presence of nine of its most active members in Parlia- 
ment, had thrown elements of doubtinthe midst of the "anarchists." Political 
events had repressed the movement in Spain, which disappeared without 
leaving scarcely a trace; in Switzerland the party in favor of political action, 
which worked hand in hand with the Germans, became stronger every day 
and soon outnumbered the few anarchists at the rate of 300 to 1; in Italy, 
after a childish attempt at "social revolution" (Bologna, 1874) at which 
neither the sense nor the pluck of the "anarchists" showed to advantage, the 
real working-clas§ element began to look out for more rational means of 
action. In Belgium, the movement, thanks to the abstentionist policy of the 
leaders, which left the working class without any field for real action, had 
come to a dead stand. In fact, while the political action of the Germans led 
them from success to success, the working class of those countries, where 
abstention was the order of the day, suffered defeat after defeat, and got 
tired of a movement barren of results; their organizations dropped into 
oblivion, their press organs disappeared one after the other. The more sen- 
sible portion of these workmen could not but be struck by this contrast; 
rebellion against the "anarchist" and abstentionist doctrine broke outin Italy 
as well as in Belgium, and people began to ask themselves and each other, 

The Workingmen of Europe in 1877 

why for the sake of a stupid dogmatism they should be deprived of applying 
the very means of action which had proved itself the most efficacious of all. 
This was the state of things when the grand electoral victory of the Germans 
settled all doubts, overcame all hesitation. No resistance was possible against 
such a stubborn fact. Italy and Belgium declared for political action; the 
remnants of the Italian abstentionists, driven to despair, attempted another 
insurrection near Naples; some thirty anarchists proclaimed the "social 
revolution," but were speedily taken care of by the police. All they attained 
was the complete breakdown of their own sectarian movementin Italy. Thus 
the anarchist organization, which had pretended to rule the working class 
movement from one end of Europe to the other, was again reduced to its 
original nucleus, some two hundred men in the Jura district of Switzerland, 
where from the isolation of their mountain recesses, they continue to protest 
against the victorious heresy of the rest of the world, and to uphold the true 
orthodoxy as laid down by the Emperor Bakounine, now defunct. Andwhen 
in September last the Universal Socialist Congress met at Ghent, in 
Belgium—a congress which they themselves had convoked—they found 
themselves an insignificant minority, face to face with the delegates of the 
united and unanimous great working class organizations of Europe. The 
Congress, while energetically repudiating their ridiculous doctrines and their 
arrogant pretensions, and estabhshing the fact that they repudiated merely 
a small sect, extended to them, in the end, a generous toleration. 
Thus, after a four years' intestine struggle, complete harmony was restored 
to the action of the working class of Europe, and the policy proclaimed by 
the majority of the last Congress of the International was thoroughly vindi- 
cated by events. A basis was now recovered upon which the workingmen 
of the different European countries could again act firmly together, and give 
each other that mutual support which constitutes the principal strength of 
the movement. The International Workingmen's Association had been 
rendered an impossi-[...] many, which forbade the workmen of these coun- 
tries to enter into any such international bond. The Governments mighthave 
spared themselves all this trouble. The working class movement had out- 
grown not only the necessity but even the possibility of any such formal 
bond; but not only has the work of the great Proletarian organization been 
fully accomplished, it continues to live itself, more powerful than ever, in 
the far stronger bond of union and solidarity, inthe community of action and 
policy which now animates the working class of all Europe, and which is 
emphatically its own and its grandest work. There is plenty of variety of 
views amongst the workmen of the different countries, and even of those 
of each country taken by itself; but there are no longer any sects, no more 
pretensions to dogmatic orthodoxy and supremacy of doctrine, and there is 

Friedrich Engels 

a common plan of action originally traced by the International but now 
universally adopted because everywhere it has grown consciously or uncon- 
sciously out of the struggle of the necessities of the movement; apian which, 
while adapting itself freely to the varying conditions of each nation and each 
locality, is nevertheless the same everywhere in its fundamental traits, and 
thus secures unity of purpose and general congruence of the means applied 
to obtain the common end, the emancipation of the working class through 
the working class itself. 

The Labor Standard. 
Nr. 45, 17. März 1878 

HI. 

In the preceding article, we have already foreshadowed the principal facts 
of interest connected with the history ofthe working class movement in Italy, 
Spain, Switzerland and Belgium. Still, something remains to be told. 

In Spain, the movement had rapidly extended between 1868 and 1872, 
when the International boasted of more than 30,000 paying members. But 
all this was more apparent than real, the result more of momentary ex- 
citement, brought on by the unsettled political state of the country than by 
real intellectual progress. Involved in the Cantonalist (federalist-republican) 
rising of 1873, the Spanish International was crushed along with it. For a time 
it continued in the shape of a secret society, of which no doubt, a nucleus 
is still in existence. But as it has never given any sign of life save sending 
three delegates to the Ghent Congress, we are driven to the conclusion that 
these three delegates represent the Spanish working class much in the same 
way as whilom the three tailors of Tooley-street represented the People of 
England. And whenever a political revulsion will give the workingmen of 
Spain the possibility of again playing an active part, we may safely predict 
that the new departure will not come from these "anarchist" spouters, but 
from the small body of intelligent and energetic workmen who, in 1872, 
remained true to the International and who now bide their time instead of 
playing at secret conspiracy. 

In Portugal the movement remained always free from the "anarchist" taint, 
and proceeded upon the same rational basis as in most other countries. The 
Portuguese workmen had numerous International sections and trades' 
Unions; they held a very successful Congress in January 1877, and had an 
excellent weekly: "O Protesto" (The Protest). Still, they too were hampered 
by adverse laws, restrictive of the press and of the right of association and 

The Workingmen of Europe in 1877 

public meeting. They keep struggling on for all that, and are now holding 
another Congress at Oporto, which will afford them an opportunity of show- 
ing to the world that the working class of Portugal takes its proper share in 
the great and universal struggle for the emancipation of labor. 
The workmen of Italy too, are much obstructed in their action by middle 
class legislation. A number of special laws enacted under the pretext of 
suppressing brigandage and wide-spread secret brigand organizations, laws 
which give the government immense arbitrary powers are unscrupulously 
applied to workmen's association; their more prominent members equally 
with brigands are subjected to police supervision and banishment without 
judge or jury. Still the movement proceeds, and, best sign of life, its centre 
of gravity has been shifted from the venerable, but half-dead cities of 
Romagna to the busy industrial and manufacturing towns of the North, a 
change which secured the predominance of the real working class element 
over the host of "anarchist" interlopers of middle class origin who pre- 
viously had taken the lead. The workmen's clubs and trades' Unions, ever 
broken up and dissolved by the government, are ever reformed under new 
names. The Proletarian Press, though many of its organs are but short-lived 
in consequence of the prosecutions, fines and sentences of imprisonment 
against the editors, springs up afresh after every defeat, and, in spite of all 
obstacles, counts several papers of comparatively old standing. Some of 
these organs, mostly ephemeral ones, still profess "anarchist" doctrines, but, 
that fraction has given up all pretensions to rule the movement and is gradu- 
ally dying out, along with the Mazzinian or middle class Republican party, 
and every inch of ground lost by these two factions is so much ground won 
by the real and intelligent working class movement. 

In Belgium, too, the centre of gravity of working class action has been 
shifted, and this action itself has undergone an important change in con- 
sequence. Up to 1875, this centre lay in the French-speaking part of the 
country, including Brussels, which is half French and half Flemish; the 
movement was, during this period, strongly influenced by Proudhonist 
doctrines, which also enjoin abstention from political interference, espe- 
cially from elections. There remained, then, nothing but strikes, generally 
repressed by bloody intervention of the military, and meetings in which the 
old stock phrases were constantly repeated. The work-people got sick of this 
and the whole movement gradually fell asleep. But since 1875 the manufac- 
turing towns of the Flemish speaking portion entered into the struggle with 
a greater and as was soon to be proved, a new spirit. In Belgium there are 
no factory laws whatever to limit the hours of labor of women or children; 
and the first cry of the factory voters of Ghent and neighborhood was for 
protection for their wives and children, who were made to slave fifteen and 

Friedrich Engels 

more hours a day in the Cotton Mills. The opposition of the Proudhonist 
doctrinaires who considered such trifles as far beneath the attention of men 
occupied with transcendentrevolutionism, was of no avail, and was gradually 
overcome. The demand of legal protection for factory-children became one 
of the points of the Belgian working class platform, and with it was broken 
the spell which hitherto had tabooed political action. The example of the 
Germans did the rest, and now the Belgian workmen, like those of Germany, 
Switzerland, Denmark, Portugal, Hungary, Austria and part of Italy, are 
forming themselves into a political party, distinct from, and opposed to, all 
other political parties, and aiming at the conquest of their emancipation by 
whatever political action the situation may require. 

The great mass of the Swiss workmen—the German speaking portion of 
them—had for some years been formed into a "Workmen's Confederation" 
which at the end of 1876 counted above 5,000 paying members. There was, 
alongside of them another organization, the "Grutli Society," originally 
formed by the middle class radicals for the spread of Radicalism amongst 
workmen and peasants ; but gradually social democratic ideas penetrated into 
this widely-spread association and finally conquered it. In 1877, both these 
societies entered into an alliance, almost a fusion, for the purpose of organiz- 
ing a Swiss political labor party; and with such vigor did they act that they 
carried, at the national vote, the new Swiss Factory Law, of all existing 
factory acts the one which is most favorable to the work-people. They are 
now organizing a vigilant supervision to secure its due execution against the 
loudly proclaimed ill-will of the mill owners. The "anarchists," from their 
superior revolutionary standpoint as a matter of course violently opposed 
all this action, denouncing it as a piece of arrant treason against what they 
call "the Revolution;" but as they number 200 at the outside and here as 
elsewhere are but a general staff of officers without an army, this made no 
difference—The programme of the Swiss working men's Party is almost 
identical with that of the Germans, only too identical, having adopted even 
some of its more imperfect and confused passages. But the mere wording 
of the programme matters little, so long as the spirit which dominates the 
movement, is of the right sort. 

The Danish working men entered the lists about 1870 and at first made 
very rapid progress. By an alliance with the small peasant proprietors' party, 
amongst which they succeeded in spreading their views, they attained con- 
siderable political influence, so much so, that the "United Left," of which 
the peasant party formed the nucleus, for a number of years had the majority 
in parliament. But there was more show than solidity in this rapid growth 
of the movement. One day it was found out that two of the leaders had 
disappeared after squandering the money collected for party purposes from 

The Workingmen of Europe in 1877 

the workingmen. The scandal caused by this was extreme, and the Danish 
movement has not yet recovered from the discouragement consequent upon 
it. Anyhow, if the Danish workingmen's party is now proceeding in a more 
unobtrusive way than before, there is every reason to believe that it is 
gradually replacing the ephemeral and apparent dominationoverthe masses, 
which it has now lost, by a more real and more lasting influence. 

In Austria and Hungary the working class has the greatest difficulties to 
contend with. Political liberty, as far as the press, meetings and associations 
are concerned, is there reduced to the lowest level consistent with a sham 

constitutional monarchy. A code of laws of unheard-of elasticity enables the 
Government to obtain convictions against even the mildest expression of 
the demands and interests of the working class. And yet the movementthere, 
as well as elsewhere, goes on irrepressibly. The principal centres are the 
manufacturing districts of Bohemia, Vienna, and Pesth. Workingmen's 
periodicals are published in the German, the Bohemian and the Hungarian 
languages. From Hungary the movement has spread to Servia, where, before 
the war, a weekly newspaper was published in the Servian language, but 
when the war broke out the paper was simply suppressed. 

Thus, wherever we look in Europe, the working-class movement is pro- 
gressing, not only favorably but rapidly, and what is more, everywhere in 
the same spirit. Complete harmony is restored, and with it constant and 
regular intercourse, in one way or another, between the workmen of the 
different countries. The men who founded, in 1864, the International Work- 
ing Men's Association, who held high its banner during years of strife, first 
against external, then against internal foes, until political necessities even 
more than intestine feuds brought on disruption and seeming retirement— 
these men can now proudly exclaim: "The International has done its work; 
it has fully attained its grand aim—the union of the Proletariat of the whole 

world in the struggle against their oppressors." 

The Labor Standard. 
Nr. 46, 24. März 1878 

IV. 

Our readers will have noticed that in the three preceding articles there has 
been scarcely any mention made of one of the most important countries of 
Europe—France, and for this reason: In the countries hitherto treated of, the 
action of the working class, though essentially a political action, is not in- 
timately mixed up with general, or so to say official politics. The working 

Friedrich Engels 

class of Germany, Italy, Belgium etc., is notyeta political powerinthe State; 
it is a political power only prospectively, and if the official parties in some 
of these countries, Conservatives, Liberals, or Radicals, have to reckonwith 
it, it is merely because its rapid onward progress makes it evident, that in 
a very short time the Proletarian party will be strong enough to make its 

influence felt. But in France it is different. The workmen of Paris, seconded 
by those of the large provincial towns, have ever since the great Revolution 
been a power in the State. They have been for nearly ninety years the fighting 
army of progress; at every great crisis of French history, they descended 
into the streets, armed themselves as best as they could, threw up barricades 

and provoked the battle, and it was their victory or defeat which decided 
the future of France for years to come. From 1789 to 1830, the revolutions 
of the middle class were fought out by the workmen of Paris; it was they 
who conquered the Republic in 1848, having mistaken that Republic to mean 
emancipation of labor, they were cruelly undeceived by the defeat inflicted 

on them, in June of the same year; they resisted on the barricades Louis 
Napoleon's Coup d'Etat 1851 and were again defeated; they swept away in 
September 1870 the"defunct Empire which the middle class Radicals were 
too cowardly to touch. In March 1871 Thiers' attemptto take away from them 
the arms with which they had defended Paris against foreign invasion, forced 

them into the revolution of the Commune and the protracted struggle which 
ended with its bloody extinction. 

A national working class which thus, for nearly a century, not only has 
taken a decisive part in every crisis of the history of its own country, but 
at the same time has always been the advanced guard of European Révolu- 
tion, such a working class cannot live the comparatively secluded Ufe which 
is still the proper sphere of action of the rest of the continental workmen. 
Such a working class as that of France is bound to its past history and by 
its past history. Its history, no less than its acknowledged decisive fighting 
power has mixed it up indissolubly with the general political development 
of the country. And thus, we cannot give a retrospect of the action of the 
French working class without entering into French politics generally. 

Whether the French working class had been fighting its own battle or the 
battle of the Liberal, Radical, or Republican middle class, every defeat it 
suffered has hitherto been followed by an oppressive political reaction, as 
violent as it was enduring. Thus, the defeats of June 1848 and December 1851 
were succeeded by the eighteen years of the Bonapartist Empire, during 
which the press was fettered, the right of meeting and of association sup- 
pressed and the working class consequently deprived of every means of 
inter-communication and organization. The necessary result was that when 
the revolution of September 1870 came, the workmen had no other men to 

The Workingmen of Europe in 1877 

put into office, but those middle class radicals who under the Empire had 
formed the official parliamentary opposition and who as a matter of course 
betrayed them and their country. After the stamping-out of the Commune, 
the working class, disabled for years in their fighting power, had but one 
immediate interest: to avoid the recurrence of such another protracted reign 
of repression, and with it the necessity of again fighting, not for their own 
direct emancipation, but for a state of things permitting them to prepare for 
the final emancipatory struggle. Now, in France there are four great political 
parties: three monarchist, the Legitimists, Orleänists and Bonapartists, each 
with a separate pretender to the crown; and the Republican party. Whichever 
of the three pretenders were to ascend the throne, he would in every case 
be supported by a small minority only of the people, he would consequently 
have to rely upon force only. Thus, the reign of violence, the suppression 
of all public liberties and personal rights, which the working class must wish 
to avoid, was the necessary concomitant of every Monarchist restoration. 
On the other hand the maintenance of the established Republican govern- 
ment left them at least the chance of obtaining such a degree of personal and 
public liberty as would allow them to establish a working class press, an 
agitation by meetings and an organization as an independent political party, 
and moreover, the conservation of the Republic would save them the neces- 
sity of delivering a separate battle for its future re-conquest. 

It was thus another proof of the high instinctive political intelligence of 
the French working class, that as soon as, on the 16th May last, the great 
conspiracy of the three Monarchist factions declared war against the Re- 

public, the workmen one and all, proclaimed the maintenance of the Republic 
to be their chief immediate object. No doubt in this they acted as the tan 
of the middle class Republicans and Radicals, but a working class which has 
no press, no meetings, no clubs, no political societies, what else can it be 
but the tail of the Radical middle class party? What can it do, in order to 
gain its political independence, but support the only party which is bound 
to secure to the people generally, and therefore, to the workmen too, such 
liberties as will admit of independent organization? Some people say, the 
workmen at the last election ought to have put up their own candidates, but 
even in those places where they could have done so successfully, where were 
the working class candidates, well known enough amongst their own class 
to find the necessary support? Why, the government since the Commune, 
have taken good care to arrest, as a participator in that insurrection, every 
workman who made himself known even by private agitation in his own 
district of Paris. 

The victory of the Republicans at the elections last November was signal. 
It was followed by still more signal triumphs at the departmental, municipal 

Friedrich Engels 

and supplementary elections which followed it. The Monarchist conspiracy 
would, perhaps, not have given way for all that; but its hand was lamed by 
the unmistakable attitude of the army. Not only were there numerous Re- 
publican officers especially in the lower grades ; but, what was more decisive, 
the mass of the soldiers refused to march against the Republic. That was the 
first result of the reorganization of the army, by which bought substitutes 
had been done away with and the army transformed into a fair representation 
of the young men of all classes. Thus, the conspiracy broke down without 
having to be broken up by force. And this, too, was much in the interest of 
the working class which, too weak yet after the blood-letting of 1871, can 
have no wish to waste again its greatest, its fighting power, in struggles for 
the benefit of others or to engage in a series of violent collisions before it 
has recovered its full strength. 

But this Republican victory has yet another significance. It proves that 
since 1870 the country people have made a great step in advance. Hitherto, 
every working class victory gained in Paris, was nullified in avery shorttime 
by the reactionist spirit of the small peasantry who form the great mass of 
the French population. Since the beginning of this century, the French 
peasantry had been Bonapartist. The second Republic, established by the 
Paris workingmen in February 1848, had been cancelled by the six million 
peasant votes given to Louis Napoleon in December following. But the 
Prussian invasion of 1870 has shaken the Imperialist faith of the peasantry, 
and the elections of November last prove that the mass of the country 
population had become Republican, and this is a change of the highest 
importance. It does not only mean thathenceforth all Monarchistrestoration 
has become hopeless in France. It means also the approaching alliance 
between the workingmen of the towns and the peasantry of the country. The 
small peasant proprietors established by the great Revolution are proprietors 
of the soil, but in name. Their farms are mortgaged to usurers; their crops 
are spent in the payment ofinterest and law-expenses; the notary, the attor- 
ney, the bailiff, the auctioneer are constantly threatening at their doors. Their 
position is fully as bad as that of the workingmen, and almost as insecure. 
And if these peasants now turn from Bonapartism to the Republic, they show 
by this that they no longer expect an improvement of their condition from 
those Imperialist miracles which Louis Napoleon ever promised and never 
performed. Thiers' faith in the mysterious powers of salvation held by an 
"Emperor of peasants" has been rudely dispelled by the second Empire. The 
spell is broken. The French peasantry are at last in a state of mind rational 
enough to look out for the real causes of the chronic distress and for the 
practical means to do away with it; and once set a thinking they must soon 
find out that their only remedy lies in an alliance with the only class that has 

The Workingmen of Europe in 1877 

no interest in their present miserable condition, the working class of the 
town. 

Thus, however contemptible the present Republican government of 
France may be, the final establishment of the Republic has at last given the 
French workingmen the ground upon which they can organize themselves 
as an independent political party, and fight their future battles, not forthe 
benefit of others, but for their own; the ground, too, upon which they can 
unite with the hitherto hostile mass of the peasantry and thus render future 
victories not, as heretofore, short-lived triumphs of Paris over France, but 
final triumphs of all the oppressed classes of France, led by the workmen 
of Paris and the large provincial towns. 

The Labor Standard. 
Nr.47, 31. März 1878 

V. 

(CONCLUSION.) 

There is still another important European country to be considered—Russia. 
Not that there exists in Russia a working class movement worth speaking 
of. But the internal and external circumstances in which Russia is placed are 
most peculiar and big with events of the highest importance with regard to 
the future, not only of the Russian workingmen, but those of all Europe. 

In 1861 the government of Alexander II. carried out the emancipation of 
the serfs, the transformation of the immense majority of the Russian people 
from bondsmen, attached to the soil and subject to forced labor for their 
landlord, into free peasant proprietors. This change, the necessity of which 
had long been evident, was effected in such a way that neither the former 

landlords nor the former serfs were the gainers by it. The peasant villages 
received allotments of soil, which henceforth were to be their own, while 
the landlords were to be paid for the value of the land thus ceded to the 
villages, and also, to a certain extent, for the claim they hitherto had pos- 
sessed to the peasant's labor. As the peasants evidently could not find the 
money to pay the landlords, the State steppedin. One portion of this payment 
was effected by transferring to the landlord a portion of the land hitherto 
cultivated by the peasants for their own account; the rest was paid in the 
shape of government bonds, advanced by the State, and to be repaid to it 
with interest, in yearly instalments, by the peasants. The majority of the 

landlords sold these bonds and spent the money; they are thus not only 

Friedrich Engels 

poorer than before, but cannot find laborers to till their estates, the peasants 
actually declining to work upon them and to leave their own fields un- 
cultivated. As to the peasants, their shares of land had notonly been reduced 
in size from what they had been before, and very often to an extent which, 
under Russian circumstances, left them insufficient to maintain a family; 
these shares had, in most instances, been taken from the very worstland on 
the estate, from bogs or other unclaimed lands, while the good land, hitherto 
owned by the peasants and improved by their labor, had been transferred 
to the landlords. Under these circumstances, the peasants, too, were con- 
siderably worse off than before; but besides this, they were expected to pay 
every year to the government the interest and part of the capital advanced 
by the State for buying them off, and, moreover, the taxes levied upon them 
increased from year to year. Furthermore, before emancipation, the peasants 
had possessed certain common rights on the estate lands of pasture for their 
cattle, the hewing of timber for building and other purposes, etc. Theserights 
were expressly taken from them by the new settlement; if they wanted to 
exercise them again, they had to bargain with their former landlord. 

Thus, while the majority of the landed proprietors became even more 
indebted, in consequence of the change, than they had been before, the 
peasantry were reduced to a position in which they could neither live nor 
die. The great act of emancipation, so universally extolled and glorified by 
the Liberal press of Europe, had created nothing but the groundwork and 
the absolute necessity of a future revolution. 

This revolution, the government did all in its power to hasten on—the 
corruption pervading all official spheres, and leaving whatever power for 
good they mightbe supposed to possess—this hereditary corruptionremained 
as bad as ever, and came to light glaringly in every public department at the 
outbreak of the Turkish war. The finances of the empire, completely dis- 
ordered at the end of the Crimean war, were allowed to go from bad to worse. 
Loan after loan was contracted, until there was no other means of paying 
the interest of the old debts except by contracting new ones. During the first 
years of Alexander's reign, the old imperial despotism had been somewhat 
relaxed; the press had been allowed more freedom, trial by jury established 
and representative bodies, elected by the nobility, the citizens of the towns, 
and the peasants respectively, had been permitted totake some share inlocal 
and provincial administration. Even with the Poles some political flirtation 
had been carried on. But the public had misunderstood the benevolent in- 
tentions of the government. The press became too outspoken. The juries 
actually acquitted political prisoners which the government had expected 
them to convict against evidence. The local and provincial assemblies, one 
and all, declared that the government, by its act of emancipation, had ruined 

en 

The Workingmen of Europe in 1877 

the country, and that things could not go oninthat way any longer. A national 
assembly was even hinted at as the only means of getting out of troubles fast 
becoming insupportable. And finally, the Poles refused to be bamboozled 
with fine words, and broke out into a rebellion which it took all the forces 
of the empire, and all the brutality of the Russian generals, to quellintorrents 
of blood. Then the government turned round again. Stern repression once 
more became the order of the day. The press was muzzled, the political 
prisoners were handed over to special courts, consisting of judges packed 
for the purpose, the local and provincial assemblies were ignored. But it was 
too late. The government, having once shown signs of fear, had lost its 
prestige. The belief in its stability, and in its power of absolutely crushing 
all internal resistance, had gone. The germ of a future public opinion had 
sprung up. The forces could not be brought back to the former implicit 
obedience to government dictation. Discussion of public matters, if only 
in private circles, had become a habit among the educated classes. And 
finally, the government, with all its desire to return to the unbridled des- 
potism of the reign of Nicholas, still pretended to keep up, before the eyes 
of Europe, the appearances of the liberalism initiated by Alexander. The 
consequence was a system of vacillationund hesitation, of concessions made 
to-day and retracted to-morrow, to be again half-conceded and half-retracted 
in turns, a policy changing from hour to hour, bringing home to everybody 
the intrinsic weakness, the want of insight and of will, on the part of a 
government which was nothing unless it was possessed of a will and of the 
means to enforce it. What was more natural than that every day should in- 
crease the contempt felt for a government which, long since known to be 
powerless for good and obeyed only through fear, now proved that it doubted 
of its power of maintaining its own existence, that it had at least as much fear 
of the people as the people had of it? There was only one way of salvation 
for the Russian government, the way open to all governments brought face 
to face with overwhelming popular resistance—foreign war. And foreign war 
was resolved upon; a war, proclaimed before Europe as undertaken for the 
deliverance of Christians from protracted Turkish misrule, but proclaimed 
before the Russian people as carried on for the bringing home of their Sla- 
vonic brethren in race from Turkish bondage into the fold of the Holy 
Russian Empire. 
This war, after months of inglorious defeat, has now come to an end 
through the equally inglorious crushing of Turkish resistance, partly by 
treachery, partly by immensely superior numbers. But the Russian conquest 
of the greater part of Turkey in Europe is itself only the prelude to a general 
European war. Either Russia, at the impending European Conference (if that 
Conference ever meets), will have to recede so much from the position now 

Friedrich Engels 

gained, that the disproportion between the immense sacrifices and the puny 
results must bring the popular discontent to a violentrevolutionary outburst; 
or else, Russia will have to maintain her newly conquered position in a 
European war. More than half exhausted as she is already, her government 
cannot carry her through such a war— whatever may be its final result—with- 

out important popular concessions. Such concessions, in the face of a situa- 
tion as that described above, mean the commencement of a revolution. From 
this revolution the Russian government cannot possibly escape, it even it 
may succeed in delaying its outbreak for a year or two. But a Russian revolu- 
tion means more than a mere change of government in Russia herself. It 

means the disappearance of a vast, though unwieldy, military power which, 
ever since the French Revolution, has formed the backbone of the united des- 
potisms of Europe. It means the emancipation of Germany from Prussia, 
for Prussia has already been the creature of Russia, and has only existed by 
leaning upon her. It means the emancipation of Poland. It means the 

awakening of the smaller Slavonic nationalities of Eastern Europe from the 
Panslavist dreams fostered among them by the present Russian government. 
And it means the beginning of an active national life among the Russian 
people themselves, and along with it the springing up of a real working-class 
movement in Russia. Altogether, it means such a change in the whole sit- 

uation of Europe as must be hailed with joy by the workingmen of every 
country as a giant step towards their common goal—the universal eman- 
cipation of Labor.