The “Kölnische Zeitung” on the Elections

“Neue Rheinische Zeitung”  
No. 210, 1 February 1849  

* Cologne, January 30. The “Kölnische Zeitung” has at last also received election reports, and indeed reports that to some degree pour oil upon its wounds.

“The democratic election reports,” cries Ehren Brüggemann in a transport of joy, “the democratic election reports” (i.e., the “Neue Rheinische Zeitung”) “have grossly boasted. Reclamations are now pouring in on us from all sides.”

From all sides! The “Kölnische” will crush us with the weight of its “reclamations.” Two pages of closely packed election bulletins, each exposing a “gross boast” of the “Neue Rheinische Zeitung,” each demonstrating a victory of the constitutionalists, will bring the deepest blush of shame to our cheeks?

On the contrary.

“The reclamations are now pouring in on us from all sides.”

Brüggemann is not “boasting.” He is indeed receiving all told four whole reclamations: from the West (Trier), North (Hamm), South (Siegburg) and East (Arnsberg)! Are these not “reclamations from all sides” against the “gross boasting of the democratic election reports”!

Let us for the moment grant her the enjoyment of believing that the constitutionalists have been victorious in these four decisive places. In any case, this enjoyment is embittered by the pain that in many places the constitutionalists have succumbed to the “susceptibility of the masses.”

Naive admission by the constitutionalists that for them the “masses” are not “susceptible”!

But one consolation remains to the “Kölnische Zeitung.” And what consolation?

The “Kölnische Zeitung” on the Elections 215

The consolation that the Koblenz correspondent of the “Deutsche Zeitung”[77] is a fellow sufferer, that he, in this unhappy constellation, has spoken fitting words, worthy to figure in the leading columns of the “Kölnische Zeitung”:

“Note that the political question here too, as everywhere, becomes small beside the social question, that it is fully absorbed into it.”

Only a few days ago the “Kölnische Zeitung” wanted to know nothing of the social question. It never, or at most with a certain frivolity (so far as the “Kölnische” is capable of being frivolous), referred to this otherworldly entity. It was impious, unbelieving, free-thinking toward it. Then all at once it fares like the fisherman in the “Thousand and One Nights”; just as the spirit rose up in giant stature from the vessel he had fished from the bottom of the sea and unsealed, so before the trembling “Kölnische” there suddenly rises out of the ballot box the menacing giant spectre of the “social question.” Terrified, Ehren-Brüggemann sinks to his knees; his last hope vanishes, the spectre swallows in one gulp his whole “political question,” cherished tenderly for years, together with its legal basis and appurtenances.

Clever politics of the “Kölnische Zeitung.” It seeks to gloss over its political defeat with its social defeat.

This discovery, that it is defeated not only on the political field but also on the social, is the greatest experience of the primary elections for the “Kölnische”!

Or was the “Kölnische Zeitung” perhaps already dithyrambic about the “social question” earlier?

In fact, Montesquieu LVI. had explained in the “Kölnische Zeitung” that the social question was infinitely important, and the recognition of the imposed constitution[!?][23] was the solution of the social question.

The recognition of the imposed constitution—that, however, is above all what the “Kölnische Zeitung” calls the “political question.”

Thus before the elections the social question was absorbed into the political one; after the elections the political question is absorbed into the social one. This, then, is the difference, the experience of the primary elections, that after the elections precisely the reverse of what was a gospel before the elections is correct.

“The political question is absorbed into the social question!”

Let us disregard the fact that before the elections we already set forth as graphically as possible how there can be no talk of a “social question” as such, how each class has its own social question and how with this social question of a particular class a particular political question for that class is at the same time given.[1] Let us disregard all these flippant marginal glosses in the face of the serious, solid matron of Cologne, and let us, as far as possible, enter into the train of thought and the mode of speech of this characterful and profound newspaper.

216 | Karl Marx/Friedrich Engels - “Neue Rheinische Zeitung”

By the social question the “Kölnische Zeitung” understands the question: How are the petty bourgeoisie, the peasants and the proletariat to be helped?

And now, after the petty bourgeoisie, the peasants and the proletarians have emancipated themselves from the big bourgeoisie, the high nobility and the high bureaucracy in the primary elections, now the “Kölnische Zeitung” cries: “The political question is absorbed into the social question!”

Fine consolation for the “Kölnische”! So the fact that the workers, the peasants and the smaller burghers have driven the big-bourgeois and other highly respected constitutional candidates of the “Kölnische Zeitung” from the field with striking majorities is no defeat of the “constitutionalists,” but merely a victory of the “social question”! That the constitutionalists are defeated does not prove that the democrats have been victorious, but only that politics has been left out of the game in the face of material questions.

Profound thoroughness of the neighbouring publicist!* These petty bourgeois who are hovering on the brink of ruin, do they perhaps dithyrambic about the imposed constitution? These peasants, crushed here by mortgages and usury, there by feudal burdens, are they enthusiastic for the finance and feudal barons, their own oppressors, for whose profit and advantage the imposed constitution was precisely devised? And above all these proletarians, who at the same time languish under the regulating mania of our bureaucrats and under the profit mania of our bourgeoisie, have they reason to rejoice that the imposed constitution ties a new bond around these two classes of people-suckers?

Do not all these three classes above all have an interest in the abolition of the First Chamber, which represents not them but their direct adversaries and oppressors?

In fact, the “Kölnische Zeitung” is right: the social question swallows up the political one; the classes newly entering the political movement will vote in the interest of the “social question” against their own political interest and for the imposed constitution! 

The “Kölnische Zeitung” on the Elections 217

Can the petty bourgeois and peasants, and above all the proletarians, find a better state form for the representation of their interests than the democratic republic? Are not precisely these classes the most radical, the most democratic of the whole of society? Is not the proletariat precisely the specifically red class?—Never mind, cries the “Kölnische,” the social question swallows up the political one.

The victory of the social question is at the same time the victory of the imposed constitution according to the “Kölnische.”

But the “social question” of the “Kölnische Zeitung” also has a quite peculiar constitution. Let one read the report of the “Kölnische Zeitung” on the elections to the First Chamber!**?! and its “happy result,” which consists in the fact that Mr. Joseph Dumont has become an elector. The actual social question of the “Kölnische Zeitung” is thereby solved, of course, and in the face of it all the subordinate “social questions” that might have emerged on the occasion of the elections to the plebeian Second Chamber disappear.

May the storm of the world-historic “political question” now rising menacingly in Paris at this moment not ruthlessly crush the tender “social question” of the “Kölnische Zeitung”!


[1] See present volume, p. 183  
* See present volume, pp. 190-196