“I cannot imagine that Mr Engels and our communists are so blind as
not to see that force also dominates property, and that the injustice
in the property relations is only maintained by force. I call that
person a fool and a coward who cherishes animosity towards a bourgeois
because he is accumulating money, and leaves a king in peace because he
has acquired power,” states Mr Heinzen.
“Force also dominates property.” Property is likewise also a species
of power. The economists call capital, for example, “the command over
other labour.” We are thus confronted with two kinds of force or power:
on the one hand, the power of property, that is, of the property owner;
on the other hand, the political power, the State power. “Force also
dominates property” means that property has not yet got the political
power in its hands, but is rather vexed by it, for example, by
arbitrary taxes, by confiscation, by privileges, by the disturbing
interference of the bureaucracy in industry and trade and the like.
In other words: The bourgeoisie is not yet politically constituted
as a class. The State power is not yet its own power. In countries
where the bourgeoisie has already conquered political power, and where
political rule is nothing less than the rule, not of the individual
bourgeois over the workers, but of the bourgeois class over the whole
of society, Mr Heinzen's dictum has lost its meaning. The propertyless
are, of course, not affected by political rule, so far as it relates
directly to property.
Whilst, therefore, Mr Heinzen fancies he is uttering a truth as
eternal as it is original, he has only recorded the fact that the
German bourgeoisie must capture the political power, that is, he is
saying unconsciously what Engels says, in the brave belief that he is
saying the opposite.
“The injustice in the property relations,” continues Mr Heinzen, “is
only maintained by force.” Either Mr Heinzen understands by “the
injustice in the property relations” the above-mentioned pressure,
which the German bourgeoisie still suffers in its “most sacred”
interests from the absolute monarchy, and then he only repeats what has
just been said—or he understands by “the injustice in the property
relations” the economic relations of the workers, and in that case his
revelation amounts to this: The existing bourgeois property relations
are “maintained” by the State power, which the bourgeoisie has
organized for the protection of its property relations. The
proletarians must, therefore, overthrow the political power where it is
already in the hands of the bourgeoisie. They must themselves attain to
power, to revolutionary power. Mr Heinzen again says unconsciously what
Engels says, again in the sincere conviction of having said the
opposite. What he says he does not mean, and what he means he does not
say.
Moreover, if the bourgeoisie politically, that is, through the
agency of its State power, maintains “the injustice in the property
relations,” it does not create the latter. The “injustice in the
property relations,” conditioned by the modern division of labour, the
modern form of exchange, competition, concentration, etc., does not in
any way proceed from the political rule of the bourgeoisie, but,
contrariwise, the political rule of the bourgeoisie proceeds from these
modern relations of production, which are proclaimed by the bourgeois
economists to be necessary and eternal laws.
If, therefore, the proletariat should overthrow the political rule
of the bourgeoisie, its victory would be only temporary, only an
episode in the service of the bourgeois revolution, so long as the
material conditions which would render necessary the abolition of the
bourgeois mode of production, and consequently the definitive overthrow
of the political rule of the bourgeoisie, had not yet been created in
the course of historical development. From this point of view, the
Reign of Terror in France did no more than to clear away the feudal
ruins from French soil by its hammer blows.
The anxious and cautious bourgeoisie would have taken decades to
perform this work. The bloody action of the people, therefore, prepared
the way. Similarly, the overthrow of the absolute monarchy would have
been merely a momentary incident, if the economic conditions for the
rule of the bourgeois class had not been developed to the point of
ripeness.
Men built for themselves a new world, not out of earthly goods, as
the bluff Heinzen superstition would have us believe, but out of the
historical achievements of their shipwrecked world. In the course of
development, they have first to create the material conditions for a
new society themselves, and no effort of the mind or the will can save
them from this destiny.
It is typical of bluff common sense that where it manages to see
difference, it does not see unity, and where it sees unity, it does not
see difference. If perchance it sets up distinguishing qualities, it
immediately petrifies them, and sees nothing but sophistry in the
notion of rubbing these slabs of ideas against each other until they
catch fire.
In stating that money and force, property and rule, money-making and
power-acquiring are not the same, it is merely uttering a tautology.
How “money-making” is turned into “winning power,” and “property”
into “political rule,” and how, instead of the hard and fast
distinctions drawn by Mr Heinzen, the two forces are interrelated to
the point of unity, of all this he may quickly convince himself by
observing how the communes purchased their municipal rights; how the
citizens enticed money out of the pockets of the feudal lords by trade
and industry, on the one hand, and disintegrated their landed property
by bills of exchange, on the other hand; aiding absolute monarchy to
triumph over the great feudatories who were thus being undermined, just
as later they exploited the financial crises of absolute monarchy
itself, etc.; how the most absolute monarch became dependent on the
Stock Exchange barons through the national debt system—a product of
modern industry and of modern commerce; and how in the international
relations of peoples industrial monopoly is immediately transmuted into
political rule, as in the case of the princes of the Holy Alliance in
the “German liberation war,” who were only the paid foot soldiers of
England, etc., etc.
Mr Heinzen cannot fail to notice that even in Prussia the power of
property has been raised to the point of a mariage forcé with
the political power. Listen further:
“You wish to give a contemporary meaning to social questions; and
yet you fail to see that there is no more important question than that
of monarchy versus republic.” A little while ago Mr Heinzen only saw
the distinction between the money power and the political power,
now he only sees unity between political questions and social
questions.
The political relations of men are, of course, also social
relations, as are all relations which bind men to men. All questions
pertaining to the relations of men to each other are social questions
at the same time.
The “social questions” which have been “discussed in our time”
increase in importance in the degree that we emerge from the realm of
absolute monarchy. Socialism and communism did not originate in
Germany, but in England, France and North America. The first appearance
of a really active communist party may be placed within the period of
the middle-class revolution, the moment when constitutional monarchy
was abolished. The most consistent republicans, in England the
Levellers, in France Babeuf, Buonarotti, etc., were the first to
proclaim these “social questions.” The “Conspiracy of Babeuf,” written
by his friend and comrade Buonarotti, shows how these republicans
derived their social insight from the “historical movement.” It also
demonstrates that when the social question of princedom versus republic
is removed, not a single social question of the kind that interests the
proletariat has been solved.
The property question as it presents itself in “our time” cannot be
recognized under the form in which Mr Heinzen clothes it, i.e.
“whether it is right that one man should possess everything and another
nothing, whether man as an individual need possess anything at all,”
and suchlike simple questions of conscience and pious phrases.
The question of property assumes different forms according to the
successive stages of development of industry in general and according
to its particular stages of development in various countries.
For the Galician peasant, for example, the property question reduces
itself to the transformation of feudal landed property into small
middle-class holdings. It has for him the same meaning as it had for
the French peasants of 1789. On the other hand, the English
agricultural labourer does not stand in any relation to the landed
proprietor. He comes into contact merely with the farmer, that is, the
industrial capitalist who carries on agriculture upon factory lines.
This industrial capitalist, on his part, who pays a rent to the land
owner, stands in a direct relationship to the latter. The abolition of
landed property is therefore the most important property question that
exists for the English industrial bourgeoisie, and the struggle against
the Corn Laws had no other meaning. The abolition of capital, on the
other hand, is the property question as understood equally by the
English agricultural labourer and by the English factory worker.
Both in the English and in the French Revolutions the property
question presented itself in such wise that it seemed to be imperative
to enforce free competition and to effect the abolition of all feudal
property relations, such as manorial rights, guilds, monopolies, which
had been transformed into fetters upon the industry which was
developing between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. Lastly, in
“our time” the property question means the abolition of the antagonisms
which are produced by the great industry, the development of the world
market and of free competition.
The property question, according to the successive stages in the
development of industry, has always been the life question of a
particular class. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries when the
point at issue was the abolition of feudal property relations, the
property question was the life question of the bourgeois class. In the
nineteenth century, when the point at issue is the abolition of
bourgeois property relations, the property question is a life question
for the working class.
The property question, which in “our time” is a world-historical
question, has therefore a meaning only in the modern bourgeois society.
The more developed this society is, the more therefore the bourgeoisie
develops itself economically in a country, and consequently the more
the State power has assumed a bourgeois expression, all the more
acutely does the social question obtrude itself, in France more acutely
than in Germany, in England more acutely than in France, in the
constitutional monarchy more acutely than in the absolute monarchy, in
the Republic more acutely than in the constitutional monarchy. Thus,
for example, the crises in the credit system and in speculation, etc.,
are nowhere more acute than in North America. Nowhere, too, does social
inequality obtrude itself more harshly than in the Eastern States of
North America, because it is nowhere less glossed over by political
inequality. If pauperism has not yet developed here to the extent that
it has in England, this is due to economic conditions which need not be
further discussed at this place. Meanwhile pauperism is making the most
delightful progress.
“In a country where there is no privileged class, where all classes
of society have equal rights” (but the difficulty lies in the existence
of classes), “and where our population is far from pressing on the
means of subsistence, it is in fact alarming to see pauperism growing
with such rapidity.” (Report of Mr Meredith to the Pennsylvanian
Congress.) “It is proved that pauperism in Massachusetts has increased
by 60 per cent, in twenty-five years.” (From Miles' Register.)
As in England under the name of Chartists, so in North America under
the name of National Reformers, the workers are forming a political
party, whose slogan is not—monarchy versus republic, but rule of the
working class versus rule of the bourgeois class.
While therefore it is just in the modern bourgeois society, with its
corresponding political forms of the constitutional or the republican
representative state, that the “property question” has become the most
important “social question,” it is the peculiar situation of the German
middle-class man which prompts him to assert that the question of
princedom is the most important social question of the time.
“The princes,” Mr Heinzen tells us, are the “chief authors of all
poverty and all distress.” Where princedom has been abolished, this
explanation is of course out of place, and the slavery system upon
which the ancient republics broke down—the slavery system which will
lead to the most terrible collisions in the southern states of
republican North America, the slavery system may exclaim with Jack
Falstaff: and if reasons were as plentiful as blackberries!
Once upon a time the people were obliged to place at their head the
most eminent personalities to conduct public affairs. Later these
positions were transmitted through families. And lastly the stupidity
and depravity of mankind have tolerated this abuse for centuries. If a
conference were convened of all the native pot-house politicians of
Europe, they could answer nothing different. And if one went through Mr
Heinzen's entire works, they would yield no other answer.
Bluff commonsense believes that it explains princedom by declaring
itself to be the latter's opponent. But the difficulty which confronts
this normal method of reasoning is to show how the opponent of healthy
commonsense and of moral dignity came to be born, and to drag out a
remarkably tenacious life for centuries. Nothing simpler. For centuries
healthy commonsense and moral dignity were non-existent. In other
words, the sense and the morality of centuries answered to the
institution of princedom, instead of contradicting it. And even this
sense and this morality of bygone centuries are not understood by the
“healthy commonsense” of to-day. The latter does not grasp it, and
therefore despises it. It flees from history to morality, which allows
it full play to the heavy artillery of its moral indignation.
In the same fashion as political “healthy commonsense” here explains
the rise and continuance of princedom as the work of unreason, in the
same way religious “healthy commonsense” explains heresy and unbelief
as the work of the devil. In the same manner irreligious “healthy
commonsense” explains religion as the work of the devil, of the
parsons.
But once Mr Heinzen has explained the origin of princedom by means
of moral commonplaces, the “connection of princedom with social
conditions” follows quite naturally. Listen: “An individual
sequestrates the state, and more or less sacrifices a whole people, not
only materially, but also morally, to his person and his supporters,
institutes a graduated series of ranks, divides the people, as if they
were fat and lean cattle, into various classes, and, solely on the
ground of affection for his own person, makes every member of the State
the official enemy of the other.”
Mr Heinzen has in mind the princes upon the top of the social
structure in Germany. He does not doubt for a moment that they have
made and are daily renewing their social foundation. Can a simpler
explanation be afforded of the connection of the monarchy with social
conditions, of which it is the official political expression, than by
making this connection the work of the princes? What is the connection
between representative chambers and the modern middle-class society
which they represent? The former have made the latter. Similarly
political divine right with its apparatus and its gradations has made
the profane world, of which it is the holy of holies. By a parity of
reasoning religious divine right has made the secular conditions of
which it constitutes a fantastic and glorified reflexion.
Bluff commonsense, which proffers such homely wisdom with beseeming
pathos would of course be morally indignant at the opponent who
attempted to show that the apple did not make the apple tree.
Modern historical research has shown how absolute monarchy appeared
in the period of transition, when the old feudal classes were decaying
and the medieval burgher class was evolving into the modern bourgeois
class, without either of the disputing parties being able to settle
accounts with the other.
The elements out of which absolute monarchy builds itself up cannot
in any way be its product: they rather form its preliminary condition,
the historic origin of which is too well known to be repeated here.
That absolute monarchy in Germany developed later and is lasting longer
is to be explained by reference to the distorted course of development
of the German middle class. The solution to the riddle of this course
of development is to be found in the history of commerce and industry.
The decay of the German free towns, the destruction of the Order of
Knighthood, the defeat of the peasants—the local supremacy of the
princes which arose therefrom—the decay of German industry and of
German commerce, which were based on entirely medieval conditions, at
the same time as the modern world market was being opened up and
large-scale manufacture was thriving—the depopulation and the
barbarous condition that followed in the wake of the Thirty Years
War—the character of the reviving national branches of industry, such
as the small linen industry, which are adapted to patriarchal
conditions and relations—the nature of the articles of export, the
greater part of which belonged to agriculture, and therefore almost
alone increased the material sources of life of the landed nobility,
and consequently the power of the latter over the citizens—the
depressed position of Germany in the world market in general, whereby
the subsidies paid by foreigners to the princes became a chief source
of national income, the consequent dependence of the citizens upon the
Court, etc. etc.,—all these conditions, within which German society
and a political organization corresponding thereto developed, are
transformed by Heinzen's bluff common sense into a few pithy sayings,
the pith of which consists in the assertion that “German princedom”
made and daily remakes “German society.”
The optimistic delusion which enables healthy common sense to find
in princedom the source of German society, instead of seeing the source
of princedom in German society, is susceptible of an easy explanation.
It sees truly enough at first glance, and its first glance is always
keenest, that the German princes maintain and consolidate the old
German social condition, upon which their existence stands or falls,
and forcibly react against the dissolving elements. It likewise sees,
on the other hand, the dissolving elements striving with the princely
power. All the healthy five senses testify at once that princedom is
the foundation of the old society, its gradations, its prejudices, and
its antagonisms.
Regarded more closely, however, this phenomenon only contradicts the
rough and ready opinion for which it furnished the innocent occasion.
The powerful reactionary rôle which princedom assumed only proves
that in the pores of the old society a new society has evolved, which
feels the political husk—the appropriate covering of the old
society—to be an unnatural fetter which it must burst. The more
immature these new elements are, the more conservative appears to be
even the most vigorous reaction of the old political power. The
reaction of princedom, instead of proving that it makes the old
society, rather proves that it is at the end of its tether so soon as
the material conditions of the old society are obsolete. Its reaction
is at the same time the reaction of the old society, which is still the
official society.
If the material conditions of life of society have so far developed
that the transformation of their official political shape has become a
vital necessity for it, the entire physiognomy of the old political
power undergoes a transformation. Thus absolute monarchy now aims at
decentralization, instead of at centralization, wherein consists its
proper civilizing activity.
Itself the product of the defeat of the feudal orders, and even
taking the most active part in their destruction, it tries now to
retain at least the semblance of feudal distinctions. Formerly
favouring commerce and industry and also the rise of the burgher class,
as being necessary conditions both of the national power and of its own
brilliance, absolute monarchy now puts all kinds of obstacles in the
way of commerce and industry, which have become more and more dangerous
weapons in the hands of a powerful bourgeoisie. From the town, which
fostered its rise, it casts an anxious and dulled glance over the
countryside, which is fertilized with the corpses of its old heroic
foes.
But what Mr Heinzen understands by the “connection of politics with
social conditions” is really only the connection of German princedom
with German distress and German poverty.
The monarchy, like every other State, exists externally for the
working class only in the form of taxes. Taxes constitute the existence
of the State economically expressed. Officials and parsons, soldiers
and ballet dancers, schoolmasters and beadles, Greek museums and Gothic
towers, civil list and army list—the communal seeds wherein all these
fabulous existences embryonically slumber are—the taxes.
And what reasoning citizen would not refer the starving people to
the taxes, to the ill-gotten gains of the princes, as the source of
their poverty? German princes and German distress! In other words, the
taxes on which the princes live in opulence and which the people pay
with the sweat of their blood! What inexhaustible material for
declamatory human saviours!
No doubt the monarchy is very expensive. One has only to glance at
the North American budget and compare it with what our thirty-eight
duodecimo fatherland has to pay in order to be administered and
over-disciplined.
The blustering outbreaks of this conceited demagogy are answered not
by the communists, but by such middle-class economists as Ricardo,
Senior, etc., in a few words.
The economic existence of the State is the taxes. The economic
existence of the worker is wages. What has to be settled is the
relation between wages and taxes.
The average wage is necessarily reduced by competition to the
minimum, that is, to a wage which allows the workers and their race to
drag out a scanty existence. Taxes form a part of this minimum, for the
political business of the worker just consists in paying taxes. If the
whole of the taxes that fall on the working class were drastically cut
down, the necessary consequence would be that wages would be reduced by
the whole amount of the taxes now included in them. Either the profit
of the employer would thereby be increased to the same extent, or a
change in the method of raising taxes would have taken place. Instead
of the capitalist advancing to-day in wages the taxes which the worker
must pay, he would no longer pay them in this roundabout fashion, but
directly to the State. If wages are higher in North America than in
Europe, this is by no means due to its lighter taxation. It is the
consequence of its territorial, commercial, and industrial situation.
The demand for workers in relation to the supply of workers is
considerably greater than in Europe. And this truth is known already to
every pupil of Adam Smith.
On the other hand, so far as the bourgeoisie is concerned, both the
incidence and the nature of the taxes, as well as the spending of the
money, are a vital question, both on account of their influence upon
commerce and industry, and because taxes are the golden cord with which
absolute monarchy is strangled.
After vouchsafing such profound explanations about the “connection
of politics with social conditions” and the “class relations” with the
State power, Mr Heinzen exclaims triumphantly: “The 'communistic
narrow-mindedness' which divides men into classes, or antagonizes them
according to their handicraft, has been avoided by me. I have left open
the 'possibility' that 'humanity' is not always determined by 'class'
or the 'length of one's purse.'“ Bluff common sense transforms the
class distinction into the “length of the purse” and the class
antagonism into trade quarrels. The length of the purse is a purely
quantitative distinction, which may perchance antagonize any two
individuals of the same class. That the medieval guilds confronted each
other on the basis of handicraft is well known. But it is likewise well
known that the modern class distinction is by no means based on
handicraft; rather the division of labour within the same class
produces very different methods of work.
It is very 'possible' that particular individuals are not always
influenced in their attitude by the class to which they belong, but
this has as little effect upon the class struggle as the secession of a
few nobles to the tiers état had on the French Revolution. And
then these nobles at least joined a class, the revolutionary class, the
bourgeoisie. But Mr Heinzen sees all classes melt away before the
solemn idea of 'humanity.'
If he believes that entire classes, which are based upon economic
conditions independent of their will, and are set by these conditions
in a relation of mutual antagonism, can break away from their real
relations, by virtue of the quality of 'humanity' which is inherent in
all men, how easy it should be for a prince to raise himself above his
'princedom', above his 'princely handicraft' by virtue of 'humanity'?
Why does he take it amiss when Engels perceives a 'brave Emperor
Joseph' behind his revolutionary phrases?
But if, on the one hand, Mr Heinzen obliterates all distinctions, in
addressing himself vaguely to the 'humanity' of Germans, so that he is
obliged to include even the princes in his admonitions, on the other
hand, he finds himself obliged to set up at least one distinction among
Germans, for without a distinction there can be no antagonism, and
without an antagonism, no materials for political Capuchinian sermons.
Mr Heinzen therefore divides Germans into princes and subjects.
The 'narrow-minded' communists see not only the political
distinction of prince and subject, but also the social distinction of
classes.
It is well known that, shortly after the July Revolution, the
victorious bourgeoisie, in its September laws, made “the incitement of
class against class,” probably also out of 'humanity,' a criminal
offence, to which imprisonment and fines were attached. It is further
well known that the English bourgeois newspapers could not denounce the
Chartist leaders and Chartist writers more effectively than by
reproaching them with setting class against class. It is even notorious
that, in consequence of inciting class against class, German writers
are incarcerated in fortresses. Is not Mr Heinzen this time talking the
language of the French September laws, the English bourgeois
newspapers, and the German penal code?
But no. The well-meaning Mr Heinzen only fears that the communists
“are seeking to assure the princes a revolutionary Fontanelle.” Thus
the Belgian liberals assure us that the radicals are in secret alliance
with the catholics; the French liberals assure us that the democrats
have an understanding with the legitimists. And the liberal Mr Heinzen
assures us that the communists have an understanding with the princes.
As I once pointed out in the Franco-German Annuals, Germany has her
own Christian-Germanic plague. Her bourgeoisie was so retarded in its
development that it is beginning its struggle with absolute monarchy
and seeking to establish its political power at the moment when in all
developed countries the bourgeoisie is already engaged in the most
violent struggles with the working class, and when its political
illusions are already obsolete so far as the intellect of Europe is
concerned.
In this country, where the political poverty of absolute monarchy
still exists with a whole appendage of decayed semi-feudal orders and
conditions, there exist on the other hand, partly in consequence of the
industrial development and Germany's dependence on the world market,
the antagonisms between the bourgeoisie and the working class, and the
struggle arising therefrom, an instance of which are the workers'
revolts in Silesia and Bohemia. The German bourgeoisie therefore finds
itself in a relation of antagonism to the proletariat before it has yet
constituted itself politically as a class. The struggle among the
subjects has broken out before ever princes and nobles have been got
rid of, in spite of all Hambach songs.
Mr Heinzen does not know how to explain these contradictory
relations, which of course are also reflected in German literature,
except by putting them on to his opponents' conscience and interpreting
them as the consequence of the counter-revolutionary activities of the
communists.
Meanwhile the German workers are quite aware that the absolute
monarchy does not and cannot hesitate one moment to greet them with a
whiff of grapeshot in the service of the bourgeoisie. Why then should
they prefer the direct rule of the bourgeoisie to the brutal oppression
of absolute government, with its semi-feudal retinue? The workers know
that the bourgeoisie must not only make them wider concessions than
absolute monarchy, but that in the interests of its commerce and
industry, the bourgeoisie must create against its will the conditions
for the unity of the workers, and the unity of the workers is the first
requisite for their victory. The workers know that the abolition of
bourgeois property relations is not brought about by the maintenance of
feudal property relations. They know their own revolutionary movement
can only be accelerated through the revolutionary movement of the
bourgeoisie against the feudal orders and the absolute monarchy. They
know that their own struggle with the bourgeoisie can only break out on
the day the bourgeoisie triumphs. In spite of all, they do not share Mr
Heinzen's middle-class illusions. They can and must take part in the
middle-class revolution as a condition preliminary to the Labour
revolution. But they cannot for a moment regard it as their objective.
That the attitude of the workers is as above described, of this the
English Chartists have furnished us with a brilliant example in the
recent Anti-Corn Law League movement. Not for a moment did they believe
the lies and delusions of the middle-class radicals, not for a moment
did they abandon their struggle against the latter, but fully conscious
of what they were doing, the Chartists assisted their enemies to
triumph over the Tories, and the day after the abolition of the Corn
Laws, it was no longer Tories and Free Traders who faced each other at
the hustings, but Free Traders and Chartists. And they captured seats
in Parliament from these middle-class radicals.
Mr Heinzen understands the middle-class liberals just as little as
he understands the workers, however unconsciously he labours in their
service. He believes it necessary to repeat to them the old platitudes
anent German “laziness” and humility. But the honest man takes quite
seriously what are only servile phrases in the mouth of a Camphausen or
a Hansemann. The bourgeois gentry will laugh at this simplicity. They
know that the mob is bold and aggressive in revolutions. Consequently,
the bourgeois gentry try as far as possible to transform the absolute
monarchy into a middle-class monarchy by amicable means.
But absolute monarchy in Prussia, as formerly in England and France,
does not lend itself to peaceful transformation into a middle-class
monarchy. It does not gracefully abdicate. In addition to personal
prejudices, the princes are bound hand and foot by a whole civil,
military, and parsonic bureaucracy—constituent parts of absolute
monarchy which do not by any means desire to exchange their ruling
position for a serving position under the bourgeoisie.
On the other hand, the feudal orders hold aloof, as what is at stake
is their existence or non-existence, that is, property or
expropriation. It is clear that absolute monarchy, in spite of all the
servile homage of the bourgeoisie, perceives its true interest to lie
on the side of these orders.
As little, therefore, as the sweet persuasions of a Lally Tollendal,
a Mounier, a Malouet, or a Mirabeau could induce a Louis XVI. to cast
in his lot with the bourgeoisie, in opposition to the feudalists and
the remnants of absolute monarchy, just as little will the siren songs
of a Camphausen or a Hansemann convince Friedrich Wilhelm IV.
But Mr Heinzen has no concern either with the bourgeoisie or with
the proletariat in Germany. His party is the “party of humanity,” that
is the honest and warmhearted enthusiasts who champion middle-class
interests under the disguise of “human” objects, without being clear as
to the connection of the idealistic phrase with its realistic content.
To his party, the party of man, or the crowd of humanity in Germany,
the State builder Karl Heinzen offers the “best republic,” the best
republic devised by him, “the federal republic with social
institutions.” Rousseau once sketched the best political world for the
Poles and Mably for the Corsicans. The great Genevese citizen has found
a still greater successor.
“I submit that just as a flower can only be made out of petals, so a
republic can only be composed of republican elements.” A man who knows
how to make flowers out of petals, even if it is only a daisy, cannot
fail to devise the best republic, whatever an ill-natured world might
say.
In spite of all slanderous tongues, the brave state builder takes
the example of the Charter of Republican North America. What seems
offensive to him, he brushes aside with his common sense. Thus he
accomplishes a revised edition—in usum delphini, that is for
the use and edification of “German humanity.” The colossal picture of
the world devised by him he has in fact hung up with his own hand on
the highest summit of the Swiss Alps.
Cacatum non est pictum, hisses the voice of the “small”
impenitent snake. And the republican Ajax angrily lets the communistic
Thersites fall to the ground, and blurts out in a deep-throated voice
the fearful words: “You carry the ridiculous too far, Mr Engels!”
And really, Mr Engels? Do you not believe that the American federal
system is the best political form which statecraft has so far devised?
You shake your head? What? You deny that the American federal system
has ever been devised by statecraft at all? And that there are “best
political social forms” in abstracto? But that is the last
straw.
You are shameless enough to point out to us that the honest German
who would benefit his true fatherland by conferring on it the North
American constitution, beautified and improved, resembles the idiotic
merchant who copied the ledgers of his rich rival, and imagined that
being in possession of this copy, he had also come into possession of
the coveted wealth.
Barbaroux, and other persons who had made much noise in the world,
were made shorter by a whole head because they happened to claim the
“American federal system” to be the “best political form.” And thus it
will befall all other Goliaths to whom it may occur, in the midst of
any democratic revolution in Europe, and especially in still quite
feudal and dismembered Germany, to put the “American federal system” in
place of the one and indivisible republic and its levelling
centralization.
The state-founding Hercules indeed does not copy slavishly the North
American federal republic. He decorates it with “social institutions”;
he would regulate the property relations “according to rational
principles,” and the seven great measures wherewith he would abolish
the old bourgeois society are by no means wretched flimsy recipes
collected from modern, objectionable communist and socialist cookshops.
To the “Incas” and “Campe's books for children” the great Karl
Heinzen is indebted for his recipe for the “humanizing of society,”
just as he is indebted for the latter pompous phrase not to the
philosopher and Pomeranian Ruge, but rather to a “Peruvian” grown grey
in wisdom. And Mr Engels calls all this arbitrarily-contrived,
commonplace enthusiasm for world improvement.
Take for instance any well-meaning citizen and ask him on his
conscience: What is the difficulty under which the existing property
relations labour? And the worthy man will place his index finger at the
tip of his nose, draw two deep breaths of thought, and then give it out
as his opinion, that it is a shame for many to possess “nothing,” not
even the most absolute necessities, while others roll in shameless
millions, not only to the detriment of the propertyless masses, but
also to that of honest citizens. Aurea mediocritas. Golden
mediocrity, the worthy member of the middle class will exclaim. It is
only extremes that should be avoided. What rational state constitution
would be compatible with these extremes, these highly objectionable
extremes?
And now take a look at the Heinzen “federal republic,” with “social
institutions” and seven measures for the “humanizing of society.” There
a minimum of property is assured to every citizen, below which he
cannot fall, and a maximum of property is prescribed which he must not
exceed. Has Mr Heinzen then not solved all difficulties inasmuch as he
has repeated in the form of State decrees and thereby realized the
pious desire of all worthy citizens, that none should have too little
and none too much?
And in the same equally simple and generous fashion Mr Heinzen
solves all the economic problems. He has regulated property according
to reasonable principles corresponding to honest cheapness.
And do not raise the objection that the “rational rules” of property
are just those “economic laws” on whose cold-blooded necessity all
cheap “measures,” whether or not recommended by Incas and Campe's books
for children and held in great esteem by the most sturdy patriots, must
come to grief.
How unkind it is to raise economic objections against a man who,
unlike others, does not boast of his “studies of political economy,”
but has rather out of modesty managed to give the impression in all his
works, that he has still to make his first studies in political
economy.
Whereas private property is not a simple relation, or even an
abstract concept, a principle, but consists in the totality of
middle-class production relations—we are concerned here not with
subordinate and decaying, but with existing, middle-class private
property—whereas all these middle-class productive relations are class
relations, a connection which is obvious to every pupil of Adam Smith
or Ricardo—an alteration in these conditions can only be brought about
by an alteration of these classes in their reciprocal connection, and
an alteration in the position of classes is—a historical change, a
product of the total social activity, the product of a specific
“historical movement.”
For example, in order to explain the abolition of middle-class
property relations, modern historians would have to describe the
movement in which the bourgeoisie progressed to the point where it had
developed its conditions of life far enough to be able to abolish the
whole of the feudal orders and the feudal mode of existence, and
consequently the feudal relations of production within which these
feudal orders had been producing. The abolition of feudal property
relations and the foundation of modern middle-class society was
therefore not the result of a certain action which proceeded from a
particular theoretical principle pressed to its logical conclusion. The
principles and theories which the writers of the bourgeoisie put
forward during the latter's struggle with feudalism were rather nothing
but the theoretical expression of the practical movement. How this
expression was more or less Utopian, dogmatic, or doctrinaire,
according as it related to a more or less developed phase of the real
movement can be clearly traced.