MICHAEL LEVIN -- DEUTSCHMARX- MARX, ENGELS, AND THE GERMAN QUESTION

D E U T S C H M A R X : M A R X , E N G E L S , A N D T H E G E R M A N Q U E S T I O N *

M I C H A E L L E V I N University of London, Goldsmiths College

Ahsrrucr. Marx and Engelss analysis of German society can be fruitfully viewed as a materialist adaptation of earlier Romantic views on German special development. The failure to develop a strong bourgeois class meant that Germanys pattern of development differed markedly from the general theory outlined in Part One of the Manifesto. If the bourgeoisie could not further the development of society, that task necessarily fell to the German proletariat, thereby placing them at the head of the international workers movement. Thus the initial relative backwardness of the German working class could be transformed into a position prior to that of England, the country that industrialized first, and France, where the most complete bourgeois revolution had occurred.

The Communists turn their attention chiefly to Germany.

A M O N G the vast corpus of commentary on Marx and Engelss writings the relative neglect of their analysis of German society is surprising for a number of reasons. I t was, after all, the country in which they were born, grew up, came to political consciousness and first engaged in political activity. Furthermore a starkly explicit statement of German pre-eminence in the advance to communism is contained in their best-known short work, and is part of a brief analysis which raises crucial questions concerning not just the coherence of the Communist Manifisto itself but also of Marxist theory as a whole.

Before turning to the Manifesto let us briefly consider the background factors which made possible the statement with which this enquiry commences. It was written during The Hungry Forties, the time of German hunger riots, the 1844 Weavers Revolt and mass emigration to the United States. Signs of discontent were there for all to see, and the early German socialists were almost unanimously of the view that German conditions were outmoded and due for radical reconstruction. In 1843 Moses Hess foresaw the closing of the thought/action divide as itldugurating the reign of freedom and we are standing at its portals and knocking upon them A year later Heinrich Heine wrote that the masses will no longer tolerate their earthly poverty with Christian patience and yearn for happiness on earth. Communism is a natural consequence of this changed Weltanschauung and is spreading over the whole

* I a m grateful to Neil Harding and Professor David McLellan for their comments on an earlier

* From the Mangesto of the Communisr Parry, Part IV, in Marx Engels Collected Works,

2 My italics. Quoted in A. Fried and R. Sanders (eds), Socialist Thought: A Documentary History

draft of this article.

henceforward referred to as MECW, Vol. 6 (London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1976). p. 519.

(New York, Doubleday, 1964). p. 271. Political Studies, Vol. XXIX. No. 4 (537-554)

538 M A R X , E N G E L S , A N D T H E G E R M A N Q U E S T I O N

of germ an^'.^ According to 0. J . Hammen the air was rife with communist yearning^'.^ For Marx the German situation was so bad that it filled him with hope. The draft programme of the German-French Yearbooks (1 843) contained a plan to review the literature and publications of the old regime of Germany which is decaying and destroying itself, and finally a review of the books of the two nations which mark the commencement and continuance of the new era that we are entering.s Engels too, writing to the editor of the Northern Star in April 1844, viewed Germany as being on the threshold of great historical changes. The political state of Germany is becoming more important every day. We shall have a revolution there very shortly, which cannot but end in establishment of a Federal Republic . . . The people are resolved to have a free press and constitution to begin with. But there is so much combustible matter heaped up in all Germany and the shades of opinion are so various, that i t is impossible to predict where the movement, if once fairly commenced, may stop. However, it will be in the direction toward democracy: thus much is evident.6

G E R M A N Y A N D E U R O P E B E F O R E 1848

The precise justification for the Manijiesto statement on Germanys vanguard role will emerge later. At this stage the extent to which it fits in as a variant of the special development (Sonderentwicklung) theory of German Romantic nationalism should be noted. During the period of occupation by the Napoleonic armies the view emerged that, whatever its military and political weaknesses, Germany had a spiritual mission to fulfil. Novalis, in Die Christenheit oder Europa, 1799, believed that whereas the rest of the continent was absorbed in war, speculation and party politics, the Germans are applying themselves to becoming partners in a new and better epoch of civilization, which in time will give them a substantial ascendancy over the others. In the following few years Friedrich Schlegel, Holderlin and Schiller all presented Germany as the leading force that could change world history. With Schiller, Fichte and Arndt Germanys world role became more closely based on its assumed linguistic superiority. Like Fichte, Arndt believed that of all European peoples only the Germans could boast of an original and undefiled language, an Ursprache, not a mongrel language as did the others. The purity of language and race established the superiority of the Germans over the French and the Italians, the Englishmen and the Spaniards.8

The notion of German uniqueness developed out of the context of Romantic thought, which, as a counter to Enlightenment and Revolutionary universa- lism, propounded numerous accounts of the uniqueness and distinctiveness of all nations, cultures and individuals. Schleiermacher took the view that every

From Aus den Briefen iiber Deutschland, 1844, in H. Heine, Zur Geschichte der Religion und

0. J. Hammen, The Spectre of Communism in the 1840s, Journal ofrhe History ofIdeas, 14

Written August-September 1843. MECW. Vol. 3 (London. Lawrence and Wishart, 1975).

MECW, Vol. 3, pp: 514, 516.

Philosophie in Deufschland (Frankfurt am-Main, Insel Verlag, 1965), p. 21 I .

(1953). p. 404.

p. 131.

Novalis, Dichtungen (Reinbek bei Hamburg, Rowohlt, 1973), p. 47. * H. Kohn, The Mind of Germany (London, Macmillan, 1965), p. 77.

M I C H A E L L E V I N 539

language is a particular mode of thought and what is cogitated in one language can never be repeated in the same way in another . . . Language, thus, like the church or the state, is an expression of a peculiar life.9 However, this theory underwent a crucial transformation when the content of a particular uniqueness was designated as superiority ; when particularism was represented as the embodiment of a higher aspect of the universal. Schiller regarded the Germans as the universal people whose destiny it was to fulfil the aspirations of all mankind, and Jahn wrote of the German as a universal man (Allerwt.1lmmsc.h) to whom God has given the whole world as his home.lo Clearly, at this stage the theory of universal particularisms has been transformed into one of particular universalisms.

The notion of German linguistic superiority emerged closely and often logically interconnected with a similar claim in respect of German thought. Traces of this latter idea can be found in the writings of both Hess and Marx in the 184Os, but for them such development was one-sided. Thought on its own was inadequate. I t must seek the means to actualize itself. Hess sought to connect it with a political will, which he found in France. Thus-a significant step-he put Germany on the same level as France. Each had advanced in a one-sided way and needed the other to redress the balance. France needed German philosophy as much as Germany needed French political action. For Germany it is now the task of the philosophy of the spirit to become the philosophy of the act. For the young Marx also Germany was the land of theory, France of practice. Germany had produced, in Hegel, the greatest philosopher of the age, and France, in its Great Revolution of 1789, and in that of 1830, the foremost political movement; but German philosophy was without political commitment while French politics was devoid of adequate theoretical foundations. It is this concern that underlay the production of the significantly titled German-French Yearbooks which Marx and Ruge produced in 1844, and in which Marxs first important theoretical publications are to be found. Thus one-sidedness in certain aspects of national development was to be overcome by the proposed amalgamation of French politics with German philosophy.

As against right-wing nationalist theorists of sanderenruiekfung Marx and the intellectual left wing did not regard Germany as self-sufficient. For the right wing France was the traditional enemy; its language, culture and revolutionary politics were to be avoided at all costs. Hatred of the French became a duty. Every kind of thinking which could rise to a higher viewpoint was condemned as un-German.I2 Thus wrote Marx in 1841, for whom, in the following years, France shone brightly as a beacon of modernity. The new capital of the new world was how he described Paris in September, 1843.13

Thomas Mann once suggested that, like Russia, Germany also had its

Quoted in E. Kedourie, Nationalism (London, Hutchinson, 1961). p. 63. l o Quoted in Kohn, The Mind oj Germany, pp. 59, 80. I Fried and Sanders, Socialist Thought, p. 264. l 2 MECW, Vol. 2 (London, Lawrence and Wishart. 1975), p. 141. l 3 MECW, Vol. 3, p. 142. Also see MECW, Vol. 5 (London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1976), pp.

41 1-12, and D. McLellan, Marx before Marxism (Harmondsworth, Middx., Penguin, 1972). pp. 169, 199.


Slavophiles (Germanophiles) and its Westernizers. Marx clearly belonged to the latter. He wanted Germany to overcome its backwardness and enter the mainstream of European history, rather than wage the War against the West. Engels was later to write of the great historical nations of the west, the English and the French, compared with the backward Germans.Is In similar vein Marx pointed out that The revolutions of 1648 and 1789 were not English and French revolutions; they were revolutions of a European type. They did not represent the victory of a particular class of society over the oldpolitical order; they proclaimed the political order of the new European society.16

How, then, was a country so stagnant as Germany to enter into the mainstream of European history? How does one expose the old world to the full light of day and shape the new one in a positive way?Is Although in 1843 Marx appeared to be primarily concerned with the reform of cons~iousness~ he was in fact already working towards the identification of the proletariat as the force that could actualize philosophy and thereby modernize Germany.

In his introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegels Philosophy of Right (18434) Marx saw Germany as lying a whole historical stage behind England and France. The old corrupt condition against which these countries are rebelling in theory and which they only bear as one bears chains is greeted in Germany as the dawn of a beautiful future.*O Germany had entered the modern world only in respect of its suffering and thinking. In politics the Germans thought what other nations did.21 A wide gulf had appeared between German thought and German reality, but this dislocation could be resolved, for theory also becomes a material force as soon as it has gripped the masses.22 In Germany no kind of bondage can be broken without breaking every kind of bondage,23 and so the proletariat, as the representative of universal aspirations, presented the possibility of a German emancipation. 2 4

This optimism was soon reinforced by the Silesian weavers rebellion of summer 1844. Theory and practice were nearing a harmonious consummation. Not one of the French and English workers uprisings had such a theoretical and conscious character as the uprising of the Silesian weavers.. . [which] begins precisely with what the French and English workers uprisings end, with consciousness of the nature of the proletariat . . . not a single English workers uprising was carried out with such courage, thought and endurance. Marx then went on to praise Weitlings Guarantees of Harmony and Freedom (1 842) as the vehement and brilliant literary debut of the German worker^',^ which reduced German bourgeois literature to the level of mediocrity. From these auspicious beginnings Marx felt able to elevate the German working class to

l4 According to Kohn, The Mind of Germany, p. 262. MECW, Vol. 8 (London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1977). p. 372. MECW, Vol. 8, p. 161. MECW, Vol. 5, p. 457. MECW, Vol. 3, p. 141.

l 9 MECW, Vol. 3, p. 144. 2o MECW, Vol. 3, p. 179. 2 1 MECW, Vol. 3, p. 181. z 2 MECW, Vol. 3, p. 182. 23 MECW, Vol. 3, p. 187. 24 MECW, Vol. 3, p. 186. 2 5 MECW, Vol. 3, p. 201.

M I C H A E L L E V l N 54 I

the level attained in their respective spheres by the English and French. 'It has to be admitted that the German proletariat is the theoretician of the European proletariat, just as the English proletariat is its economist, and the French its politician'.26 Soon after Marx made a similar point concerning division of labour at the national level. What the nations have done as nations, they have done for human society; their whole value consists only in the fact that each single nation has accomplished for the benefit of other nations one of the main historical aspects [one of the main determinations] in the framework of which mankind has accomplished its development, and therefore after industry in England, politics in France and philosophy in Germany have been developed, they have been developed for the world, and their world-historic significance, as also that of these nations, has thereby come to an end.27

German philosophy, however, increasingly seemed to suffer from a defect inherent in its advanced character-that is, an isolation from real life. By 1845 Marx regarded i t as quite unprepared for a conscious social role. Philosophy had woven the most sophisticated mental webs; it had directed the imagination towards understanding the whole historical process, it had reduced theology to anthropology, but, crucially, i t had not related itself to its own society. ' I t has not occurred to any one of these philosophers to enquire into the connection of German philosophy with German reality, the connection of their criticism with their own material surroundings'.28 Somewhat similar defects aMlicted German communism which, through lack of clear-cut indigenous class distinctions, was led to a misplaced adoption of French communist ideas.

Germany at this time was a cultural rather than a political concept. I t was a demand of considerably audacity to place it alongside 'historic' nations with several centuries of unity behind them. From the perspective of the 1840s the German principalities and their inhabitants might conceivably have been dismissed along with other 'non-historic nations' for which Engels in particular had such contempt. Actually Marx and Engels could not avoid a certain ambivalence on this question. In The Germun Ideology they still distinguished between the 'Great nations-the French, North Americans, English' as against 'petty shopkeepers and philistines, like the Germans'.29 It is in this work that Marx quite decisively adopted the theory of historical stages and thereby, as he later put i t , settled 'accounts with our erstwhile philosophical c o n ~ c i e n c e ' . ~ ~ However, the break was not that clear-cut. Part IV of the Munifesro as well as the March 1850 'Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League' indicate that Marx oscillated between the two alternatives of Germany going through the full sequence of developmental stages or attempting a short cut.

However, in summary, in the mid-1840s Marx and Engels saw the German states system, economy, and class structure as anachronistic-but the emergent working-class movement as making rapid strides forward. German philosophy was sometimes praised, sometimes derided. What remained constant in their analysis of all these factors (apart from the tendency to over-react, either

l6 MECW, Vol. 3, p. 202. 2 7 MECW, Vol. 4 (London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1975). p. 281. 2 8 MECW, Vol. 5, p. 30. 2 9 MECW, Vol. 5 , p. 441. Jo Marx and Engels, Selected Works in Two Volumes, henceforward referred to as MESW

(Moscow, Foreign Languages Publishing House. 1962), Vol. I , p. 364.


positively or negatively, to every breath of German political life) was that they were always considered in terms of the backwardness/forwardness question ; always compared with an external norm; always in competition with a standard of modernization compounded out of an amalgam of, primarily, France and England, but sometimes also of Holland, Belgium and the USA. These countries provided the norm from which Germany was held to diverge. Germanys distance from their achievements was taken as the measure of its peculiarity-a notion thus clearly dependent upon a prior frame of reference for what was to be regarded as normal. The notion of German differentiation from this norm, appears, somewhat paradoxically, as both a distancing from the West but simultaneously an acknowledgement of it as a proper point of reference.

There are, in any case, obvious dangers involved in Marx and Engelss construction of a norm derived from various aspects of various countries. They assume, rather than demonstrate, that the similarities are more significant than the differences. There are numerous factors in the respective histories of England and France that cannot be easily amalgamated (such as the role of absolute monarchy, class consciousness, the Reformation, etc.), although relative to Germany the significant common factors would be earlier national unification and the stronger development of liberal ideology and a commercial middle class.

It is all too clearly apparent how during the 1840s the French revolution of 1789 could be taken as the model of bourgeois political revolution and England as the model of capitalist industrialization. As the first industrial nation other countries could see in England their own economic future. Aspects of this mentality are apparent in Engelss The Conditions of the Working Class in England. However, this very factor detracts from Englands use as a norm in that its industrialization process was necessarily unique-a pioneer industrialization, whereas all other countries industrialized in the context of those already ahead of them.

By the end of the 1840s Marx and Engelss analysis of German distinctiveness had shifted from the area of theory to that of social structure. By the time the Manifesto was being written the peculiarity of German development was held to lie not in the forwardness of its thought but in the backwardness of its social structure, as represented most significantly by the weakness of its bourgeoisie. Furthermore this element of backwardness becomes an advantage. It transforms itself into forwardness by facilitating the drastic curtailment of the bourgeois stage of history.

T H E C O M M U N I S T M A N I F E S T O A N D ITS A P P L I C A T I O N T O G E R M A N Y

Let us now return to the Communist Manifesto, for it provides the central point from which our various lines of enquiry radiate. The opening chapter is a brief philosophy of history, the purpose of which is to provide a class context for historical changes reaching as far back as Ancient Rome and forward to the presumed victory of the proletariat. This well known summary account is marked by a high level of generality and abstraction. There is hardly any reference to a specific country. Industrializing Western Europe is taken as a whole in terms of the general process it is undergoing. When Marx and Engels

M I C H A E L L E V l N 543

turned their attention from the general to the particular the famous simple model of the Communist Manifesto was subjected to considerable amendment. The process in fact began in the final section of the very same work, where Germany appears as an exception to the general scheme. The peculiarity of Germany is that a proletariat has emerged before the full victory of the bourgeoisie. In Section I it appears that the full capitalist system, from which the proletariat are produced, is a consequence of bourgeois power. Yet capitalism in Germany is acknowledged to have developed without the bourgeois conquest of political power. Economic and political developments seem to be moving at a different pace although one had been led to regard the latter as a product of the former. In the simple account the feudal state placed fetters on the development of capitalism. For the bourgeois productive forces to be fully exploited it was a necessity that these fetters be burst asunder. Yet in Germany-in spite of the fetters of state structures with feudal remnants-a bourgeois economic system had developed to the stage of producing a proletariat class that was not only beginning to organize itself, but was actually on the verge of assisting in a bourgeois revolution that will be but the prelude to an immediately fbllowing proletarian rev~lut ion .~ I t was for this reason that the communists turn their attention chiefly to Germany. a country thought to be on the eve of a bourgeois revolution, rather than to France and England, countries already well past that stage. Particular circumstances evidently make it possible for a society to skip the full development of the capitalist epoch of history, so here in the Marzi/ksto we find an analysis that visualizes Germany not merely catching up with the historical nations of the West but also taking the lead from them in advancing towards communism.

Note that this prognosis does not actually suggest that Germany will dispense with a bourgeois revolution-although such a revolution will not be uniquely theirs. I t will be made by the bourgeoisie in alliance with the proletariat, who then wrest from them the normal full fruits of victory-i.e. an epoch of class dominance. I t is already clear that Germany is assumed capable of attaining socialism without many of what had earlier been presented as necessary preconditions and that the assumption of bourgeois rule constituting a whole historical epoch-as had feudalism-need not necessarily apply. The peculiarity of German social development was more often attributed primarily to the weaknesses of its bourgeoisie. In the Manifesto this is not denied, but neither is i t where the emphasis lies. Rather it is the relative strength of the proletariat that is to be the decisive factor. But the precise nature of this strength-whether i t consisted of numbers, organization or revolutionary fervour, or a combination of each-is left unexplained. In fact the little we learn of German socialism in the Mani/esto suggests an immaturity that quite unfits i t for the role of European leadership. I f its literature is any index of general development, we must note that Marx and Engels described German True socialism as the bombastic representative of the petty- bourgeois Philistine.. . With very few exceptions all the so-called Socialist and Communist publications that now (1 847) circulate in Germany belong to the domain of this foul and enervating l i t e r a t ~ r e . ~ ~

M y italics. MECW, Vol. 6, p. 519 3z MECW, Vol. 6, pp. 512, 513.


A further point concerning Section IV-apart from its mention of Germany as the place to which the communists chiefly turn their attention, is the list of countries also considered-France, Switzerland and Poland, in order of appearance. At least these are the countries for which the precise placing of the Communists vis-h-vis other opposition parties is given. As for England and America, the chapter begins by stating that Section I1 has made clear the relations of the Communists to the existing working-class parties, such as the Chartists in England and the Agrarian Reformers in America.33 However, if one turns to Section I1 for elaboration one finds merely a general statement of the relationship of communists to the proletarians as a ~ h o l e ~ ~ - b u t no explicit reference to either England or America. Thus, surprisingly, the Manifesto contains not as much as one precise sentence on the context of communist struggle in the most industrially advanced capitalist country of the time. Yet in the very month (November 1847) that the Communist League commissioned the preparation of their Manifesto, its authors had delivered speeches containing the following pronouncements. Murx: Of all countries, England is the one where the contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie is most highly developed. The victory of the English proletarians over the English bourgeoisie is, therefore, decisive for the victory of all the oppressed over their oppressors. Engels: I also believe that the first decisive blow which will lead to the victory of democracy, to the liberation of all European nations will be struck by the English Chartists.35

One should, of course, point out that these speeches were made in London, whereas the Manifesro, although first published in London, was written primarily for the German Labour Movement. Furthermore it was drafted during the course of nearly a year of lectures and discussions with the members of the German Workers Educational A s s ~ c i a t i o n . ~ ~

Most of the writings on Germany in the 1840s were by Engels who, in a number of ways, was less optimistic than Marx, expecting at most a German 1789. He could not, however, avoid the suspicion that the German bourgeoisie were too weak-willed to take the opportunities that came their way. With his more direct experience of Manchester and the Chartist movement, Engels more consistently regarded England as forming the vanguard of political as much as of economic advance. As an example of this difference of emphasis let us compare the section on German predominance in the Communist Manifesto, written by Marx, with its first draft, Principles of Communism, written by Engels in October 1847. In answer to the question Will it be possible for this revolution to take place in one country alone? Engels replied that communist revolution will occur in all civilized countries at the same time, that is at least in England, America, France and Germany. But in each of these countries it would develop at a different pace, depending on the level of industry, wealth, and productive strength. It will therefore be slowest and most difficult to carry

3 3 MECW, Vol. 6, p. 518. 34 MECW, Vol. 6, p. 497. 3 5 MECW, Vol. 6, p. 389. 36 R. Blackburn, Marxism: Theory of Proletarian Revolution, New Left Review, 97 (1976).

p. 7.


out in Germany, quickest and easiest in England. Thus, when in possibly the most optimistic year of their lives, Engels envisaged Germany being caught up in worldwide revolution he saw her being pulled along by the general tide of events rather than taking the lead.37

A few months later, in The Movement of 1847, Engels once again placed England and America to the fore of the communist movement. Behind them came France and Germany, and then Italy and S ~ i t z e r l a n d . ~ ~ We must, then, assume that the formulation in the Manifesto represents Marxs deliberate revision of Engelss rather different emphasis on this question.

In view of the leading role expected of the German working class i t is now necessary to consider what attributes Marx and Engels expected of a socialist movement ready for the seizure of state power. Section 11 of the Manifesto notes that the immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all the other proletarian parties: formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the p r ~ l e t a r i a t . ~ ~ No hint of a time sequence is given nor any other factor concerning the relationship of the first aim to the subsequent ones. However, only a few years previously Marx wrote: The proletariat is coming into being in Germany only as a result of the rising industrial movement.40 And just a mere half year before the Manijesto was written Engels commented that the German workers were not yet constituted into a class and would not be ready to attain a dominant position for a long time. Their outlook was thoroughly petty- bourgeois and, in fact, any advance in Germany at this time could only come through the b o ~ r g e o i s i e . ~ ~

Furthermore, how large was this working class from whom so much was expected? The Manifesto described the proletarian movement as the independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immensc

This easily gives the impression that socialist revolution is simply a quantitative victory in the battle of numbers. But as late as the 1870s Marx wrote that the majoritj. of the toiling people in Germany consists of peasants, and not of proletarian^'.^^ And in France, sixty years after their bourgeois revolution the most numerous class of French society were the small-holding peasants.44 The simple view that size equals power, in some ways intimated in the Manijesto, makes sense neither in terms of that work nor of Marx and Engelss other writings. Thus the peasantry may be the largest class in feudal and early capitalist society, yet in Marxist theory they are always a lower class and never able to establish their own class rule This class of the population is absolutely incapable of any revolutionary i n i t i a t i ~ e . ~ ~ The emergence of the bourgeoisie was attributed not to its size but to control of a mode of production that had a clear growth potential which feudalism was

MECW, Vol. 6, pp. 351-2. 3 8 MECW, Vol. 6, p. 529. 39 MECW, Vol. 6, p. 498. 40 MECW, Vol. 3, p. 186. 4 1 MECW, Vol. 6, pp. 84-6. 4 2 My italics. MECW, Vol. 6, p. 495 43 My italics. MESW, Vol. 2, p. 31. 44 MESW, Vol. I , p. 333.

MESW, Vol. 1, p. 230.


unable to contain. Its position had become too narrow for its expansive power as Engels once put it.46

Numbers, then, are obviously a factor in class power, but they are not everything. The revolutionary class is not necessarily the largest submerged class, but that which combines strategic position and growth potential with class consciousness and organization. On all these counts, however, any proletarian revolution in Germany around the time the Manifesto was written would have to be judged premature.

A further prerequisite for proletarian revolution is the full acquisition of the bourgeois heritage. The notion that Germany could achieve socialism without having first developed a capitalist economy, state, and ideology is prob- lematical in this respect. The Manifesto assumes that one ruling class not only creates its successor but also provides it with a political education. The bourgeoisie itself, therefore, supplies the proletariat with its own elements of political and general education, in other words, it furnishes the proletariat with weapons for fighting the bo~rgeoisie.~ Clearly a working class coming to power in the situation envisaged for Germany would miss out on much of the liberal heritage. What, then, is this heritage and what are the consequences of its curtailment prior to full development? Among the significant factors in this respect are political centralization, high productivity, and the dominance of liberal ideology in terms of both the free market and political participation. Political centralization had not yet been achieved in Germany a t the time the Manifesto was written. Its achievement by the communists would have secured for them the nationalist loyalties that went instead, not to the bourgeoisie, for whom the 1848 revolution was ultimately a failure, but to the military and Junker aristocratic class, who, with the prestige thereby attained, further reinforced their hold on Germany for virtually half a century after 1870. The need to achieve high productivity would have caught a dominant German communism in the contradiction later experienced by the Russians-of incurring the disability of imposing the hardships that as yet appear to be an inseparable part of the industrialization process. On the simple theory of Section I of the Manifesto communist rule arrives just at the time when it can garner the fruits of the process of industrialization rather than suffer the agonies of its creation. Capitalism shared with the apple the tendency for the ripest to fall first. That certain material prerequisites have to be met before socialist revolution is feasible is a recurrent, but not consistent, theme in Marx and Engelss writings. In the German Zdeofogy they noted that i t is possible to achieve real liberation only in the real world and by real means, that slavery cannot be abolished without the steam-engine and the mule jenny, serfdom cannot be abolished without improved agriculture, and that, in general, people cannot be liberated as long as they are unable to obtain food and drink, housing and clothing in adequate quality and quantity. Liberation is a historical and not a mental act, and it is brought about by historical conditions, the level of industry, commerce, a g r i ~ u l t u r e . ~ ~

46 Introduction (1892) to Socialism: Utopian and Scientific in MESW, Vol. 2, pp. 102-3.

48 MECW, Vol. 5, p. 38, and see p. 54. MECW, Vol. 6, p. 493.


A similar approach is implicit in Engelss later statement that the bourgeoisie, therefore, in this respect also is just as necessary a precondition of the socialist revolution as the proletariat itself.49

Further, the weakness of the liberal ideological heritage lessens the likelihood of the participatory demands that communism is designed to accommodate. In a sense the vision of communism is that of an antithesis to liberalism-the meeting of the expectations i t creates but is unable to fulfil, the deliverance of its false promises. I t assumes that liberal demands have been made but not met-that the liberal experience has been gone through and found wanting. I t is in this area that we come to one of the basic factors of German political culture. The concept of the citizen as an active participant in the affairs of his state was a key component of the political thought of the late eighteenth century. I t is with figures such as Rousseau, Paine and Jefferson that such notions are associated. (The first two proudly adopted the title of Citizen.) Alongside this emphasis on meaningful citizenship and a community of the politically aware and active, there developed a whole civil rights tradition that viewed the state as an object of suspicion rather than glorification, and so sought constitutional safeguards against it rather than integration within it . The individual rights of liberalism explicitly included the right to express different opinions, to oppose either in speech, through the press or, as a last resort, by force of arms (as in the American Declaration of Independence). Classical liberalism thereby articulated an opposition to the whole mentality of the Obrigkeitsstaut. The weakness of this emphasis underlies the tradition of the unpolitical German and helps explain crucial areas of German politics in our own century. In Germany the middle classes did not develop an ideology of independence and opposition to the state because they experienced a relatively high level of integration within it-as officials and teachers and through state-guided and protected industrialization. The status of the military was such that its ethic of obedience to orders pervaded wider areas of society, for whom the liberal virtues of pluralism and free speech came to appear as inappropriate as they were for the military itself. Opposition was not so much integrated as exported. Thus Germany maintained into the twentieth century an attitude toward political parties-the association of sectional interest and political opposition with faction, selfishness or treason-that in Britain had been a characteristic of eighteenth- century politics.

T H E T I M I D I T Y O F T H E B O U R G E O I S I E

The previously suspected weaknesses of the German bourgeoisie were, for Marx and Engels, fully confirmed by the dismal performance of the Frankfurt parliament and failure of the 1848 uprisings. Unification from below-a central aspect of their strategy-had not occurred. Anger was the initial response: History presents no more shameful and pitiful spectacle than that of the German b o u r g e ~ i s i e . ~ ~ In a series of works in the early 1850s Marx and

J9 On Social Relations in Russia. 1875 in MESW. Vol. 2, p. 50. lo MECW, Vol. 7 (London, Lawrence and Wishart. 1977), p. 504


Engels developed a comprehensive theory of the weaknesses of the German bourgeoisie in which its main features were its belated historical emergence and consequent possibility of political influence only at a time when it also had to contend with the proletariat below as well as the aristocracy above.

The source of Germanys divergence from the Western pattern could be traced at least as far back as the peasant wars of the sixteenth century. These had, in short, been won by the wrong side-the princes. They had maintained and even furthered their predominance whereas their opponents, the clergy, the aristocracy, and the town interests, had lost out. Engels saw this as a clear contrast to the English and French situation, where an alliance between the monarchy and the rising bourgeoisie paved the way for national unification. The function of absolute monarchy for the bourgeoisie lay in its power to shatter provincial boundaries and restrictions, thereby facilitating the full development of internal trade on which the bourgeoisie rely and from which they grow. The centralization of the state that modern society requires arises only on the ruins of the military-bureaucratic government machinery which was forged in opposition to f e u d a l i ~ m . ~ ~ German backwardness was a consequence of a situation in which disunity both led to the victory of the princes and was thereby strengthened by it. Germany had nothing more than regional centres, with the separate interests of the north and south developing quite different trading connections and outlets. No single city was in the situation of becoming the industrial and commercial centre of the whole country, as, for example, London was for England. 5 2 Engels also referred to a long period of freedom from foreign invasion, which made the need for unity appear less strong.53

Germanys disadvantages were further compounded by the devastation and depopulation of the Thirty Years War, which pushed it backward just at the time when the modern world market opened up and facilitated the rise of large scale manufacturing. In a lecture to the London German Workers Educational Society in November 1847, Engels pointed out that the world market primarily benefited England and the European Atlantic seaboard nations. In contrast Italian and German commerce were totally ruined.54 Engels had previously emphasized the extremely late appearance of the bourgeois class in Germany, attributing its emergence to foreign invasion. The creator of the German bourgeoisie was Napoleon. Until then there had been rich shipowners in the Hansa cities and some wealthy bankers further inland but no class of big capitalists, and least of all of big industrial capitalist^'.^^ But, for all their weaknesses the bourgeoisie still presented the only conceivable base for a conquest of power.

Engelss account is more discriminating and significantly different from the more famous general formulation in Part I of the Manifesro: The discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape, opened up fresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie . . . gave to commerce, to navigation, to industry, an impulse never

d l MESW, Vol. 1 , p. 340. dl Marx and Engels, Vber Deurschland und die deursche Arbeirerbewegung (Berlin, Dietz Verlag.

1973). Band 1, p. 191. 5 3 Uber Deurschland und die deursche Arbeirerbewegung, Band 1 , p. 280. d 4 MECW, Vol. 6, p. 627.

MECW, Vol. 6, p. 80.


before known, and thereby to the revolutionary element in the tottering feudal society, a rapid d e v e l ~ p m e n t . ~ ~ The reference to Germany and Italy in the same section assumed them to be part of the aforementioned general development.

Already in 1844 Marx had foreshadowed the problems that beset a class whose successor has appeared before it has itself achieved emancipation, a class whose opportunity to imprint its character upon history disappeared before it had the strength to take it . In Germany the very opportunity of a great role has on every occasion passed away before it is to hand, thus every class, once i t begins the struggle against the class above it, is involved in the struggle against the class below it. Hence the princes are struggling against the monarchy, the bureaucrats against the nobility, and the bourgeoisie against them all, while the proletariat is already beginning to struggle against the bourgeoisie. No sooner does the middle class dare to think of emancipation from its own standpoint than the development of the social conditions and the progress of political theory pronounce that standpoint antiquated or at least p r o b l e m a t i ~ . ~ ~

The events of 1848-9 strengthened the conviction that the full victory of liberal economic and political ideas could only be gained by a bourgeoisie that sees opponents above i t ; not by one that has enemies on both sides, for then it is made too aware that the liberties it seeks for itself become socialistic in the sense that they also aid the emerging working class.

A bourgeoisie in this position has nowhere to turn. Unable to rely on itself alone it is torn between a half-hearted radicalism in pursuit of its own economic interests and subservience to the aristocracy as a means of protection from the mob. Such is the social background to the vacillation, timidity, treachery and cowardice that Marx and Engels observed in the German middle classes. Why press boldly forward when in case of victory, were they not sure to be immediately turned out of office, and to see their entire policy subverted by the victorious proletarians who formed the main body of their fighting army? Thus placed between opposing dangers which surrounded them on every side, the petty bourgeoisie knew not to turn its power to any other account than to let everything take its chance.SR

Looking back on the 1848 revolutions Engels later noted how The German bourgeoisie, instead of conquering by virtue of its own power, conquered in the tow of a French workers revolution,, . Terrified not by what the German proletariat was, but by what it threatened to become and what the French proletariat already was, the bourgeoisie saw its sole salvation in some compromise, even the most cowardly, with monarchy and nobility.sg

The consequence of this was that political Liberalism, the rule of the bourgeoisie, be it under a Monarchical or Republican form of government, is forever impossible in Germany.60

5 6 MECW, Vol. 6, p. 485.

s 8 F. Engels, Cerniany: Revolurion and Counrer-Revolurion (London, Lawrence and Wishart,

s Q MESW, Vol. 2. pp. 329, 330. Marx had also suspected the French bourgeoisie of accepting

6o Engels, Germany: Revolution and Counter-Revolurion. p. 1 12.

MECW, Vol. 3. pp. 185-6.

1969). p. 105.

political nullity in return for economic security. See MESW. Vol. I , pp. 288, 319.


T H E RISE O F T H E P R O L E T A R I A T

In this situation the torch of progress necessarily passes to the class that remains unequivocally radical. As E. H. Carr has put it: Once bourgeois democracy was recognised as a stepping-stone to socialism, it could be brought into being only by those who believed also in socialism.61 Thus it is to the further analysis of the German working class that we must now turn.

After 1850 Marx and Engelss analysis of German socialism contained three main aspects. (1) The initial response was to stress the immaturity of the working-class movement and the danger of its being thrust forward prematurely. In 1850 Marx declared his devotion to a party which would do best not to assume power just now. The proletariat, if it should come to power, would not be able to implement proletarian measures immediately, but would have to produce petty-bourgeois ones. Our party can only become the government when conditions allow its views to be put into practice.62 At this point Marx broke unequivocally with the section of the Communist League supported by Schapper and Willich. They regarded will as more important than economic development in bringing about a socialist revolution, whereas Marx was now looking much more predominantly for the economic crisis that would herald the demise of the capitalist mode of production. Rising prosperity had been the material basis of the counter-revolution, and while it lasted the progress of the proletariat would necessarily be slow. We tell the workers: If you want to change conditions and make yourselves capable of government, you will have to undergo fifteen, twenty or fifty years of civil war.63 Engels, too, pointed out how far the German proletariat lay behind that of England or France, how modern ideas had hardly penetrated to a class mainly employed by small tradesmen, and that, in consequence, their aspirations were often directed backwards to the feudal guild system rather than forward to industrial unionism.64

(2) A second stage of the evaluation of German socialism consisted of a strong antipathy to Lassalles influence on the nascent SPD. Lassalleanism, to Marx and Engels, consisted of subservience to the Prussian state, a compromise with feudalism, bogus economic theory and the abandonment of internationalism. Long after his death in a duel (1864) Lassalles theories continued to vie with Marxs own for dominance within the party. The 1875 Gotha Programme, an attempted reconcilation between the Eisenach and Lassallean factions, was seen as far too much of a victory for the latter. In 1877 Marx declared that a rotten spirit is making itself felt in our Party in Germany, not so much among the masses as among the leaders.65 But however suspect the leadership might be, the class it represented was, thought

6 1 E. H. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1923 (Harmondsworth, Middx., Penguin, 1975),

6z Minutes of the Central Committee Meeting of 15 September 1850 in Karl Marx, The Revolutions of 1848 (Harmondsworth, Middx., Penguin, 1973), p. 343. Also see Engels letter to J. Weydemeyer, 12 April 1853, in Marx, Engels, Selected Correspondence, p. 71.

63 Marx, The Revolutions of 1848, p. 341. Also see MECW, Vol. I , pp. 231, 233, 242, and D. McLellan, Karl Marx. His Lye and Thought (London and Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1973), pp. 25&2.

V O l . I , p. 54.

64 Engels, Germany: Revolution and Counter-Revolution, p. 15. 6 5 Quoted in McLellan, Karl Marx. His Life and Thoughr, p. 434.

M I C H A E L L E V l N 55 I

Engels, the only healthy class in Germany, the only class that had avoided the hereditary German plague of petty-bourgeois and philistine sentiment. Only the proletariat had given evidence of a free outlook, energy, humour, tenacity in struggle.66 Economic and political developments were gradually fitting this class for the task of European leadership.

(3) By the 1870s Germany had emerged from the industrially backward position that Marx and Engels had lamented nearly a quarter of a century earlier. In an 1873 preface to the second edition of Cupiful Marx noted that since 1848 capitalist production has developed rapidly in Germany, and at the present time i t is in the full bloom of speculation and wind ling'.^' In this vital aspect, then, Germany no longer lagged so far behind France and England. A limitation that long held back its working-class movement had now been overcome. The war of 1870 was seen as a turning-point. Political unification and economic advance radically altered the German situation just as French socialism, already beset with a surfeit of Proudhonism, suffered a severe setback with the defeat of the Paris commune. That Germany finds her unity at first in the Prussian barracks is a punishment she has amply merited, wrote Marx in 1870. But, he continued, this war has shifted the centre of gravity of the working-class movement on the Continent from France to Germany. This places greater responsibility upon the German working class.68 It also appeared to present a favourable opportunity for Marxism to become the dominant mode of European socialism. Writing to Engels in July 1870, Marx declared that the French need a thrashing. If the Prussians win, the centralisation of the state power will be useful for the centralisation of the German working class. German predominance would also transfer the centre of gravity of the workers movements in western Europe from France to Germany, and one has only to compare the movement in the two countries from 1866 till now to see that the German working class is superior to the French both theoretically and organisationally. This predominance over the French on the world stage would also mean the predominance of our theory over Proudhons e t ~ . ~ ~

Grounds exist for suspecting Marx and Engels of putting an optimistic gloss on the situation of any country for whom they were writing. (See, for example, the Prefaces to the Manifesto translations into Russian and Italian.) Thus one might explain an apparent partiality for Germany in terms of the context in which it was expressed. However, this conclusion is not supported by the evidence. In 1891-2, when the German socialists had just emerged from the banishment to which Bismarck confined them, Engels informed both the French and the English that German socialism was at the head of the workers movement. Socialism in Germany was written at the request of Parisian socialists and first appeared in French in 1892. In it Engels explained that now the German Social Democratic Party. thanks to its uninterrupted battles and sacrifices over a period of thirty years, has attained a position unequalled by any other socialist party in the world, a position which will, within a short period of time, secure

66 Letter to E. Bernstein, 1883. in Marx, Engels. Srlecterl Corrrspondenc,e. p. 358 6 K. Marx, Capital. Vol. I (Harmondsworth, Middx., Penguin, 1976), p. 96. 6n Marx, Engels. Selwted Correspondence, p. 241. 69 K . Marx and F. Engels. Wrrke (Berlin, Dietz Verlag. 1966). Band 33. p. 5.


for it political power. The German socialists assume the foremost, the most glorious, the most responsible place in the international workers movement.70

The English received somewhat similar treatment in Engelss 1892 special introduction to the English edition of Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. The whole tenor of the introduction shows it to be very deliberately geared to an English audience. Engels clearly felt the burden of introducing to an English readership a manner of thinking they would consider alien and continental. This explains his effort to present materialism as part of the English philosophical tradition of Bacon, Hobbes, and Locke. (Such a reminder was possibly felt to be particularly necessary at a time when English educated opinion was much influenced by the idealism of Bosanquet and Green.) In a brief account of English historical development we learn that the country with the most developed capitalist economy had not even had a clear-cut bourgeois revolution, but only a series of compromises; that the bourgeoisie never held undisputed sway; that Germany rather than England is in the forefront of the world socialist movement.

What could be the reasons for this? On grounds of strict historical materialism one would expect the working-class movement to be most advanced in the country where capitalism had developed furthest. However, the reasons for Englands loss of leadership appear to rest on the qualities of the respective labour movements. The German Social Democrats had just emerged from banishment to significant electoral advances and the formulation of a Marxist programme at their 1891 Erfurt conference. In contrast, the English Fabians were-according to Engelss letters of this period-primarily intent on handing the organized labour movement over to an alliance with the Liberals and, at all cost, avoiding class conflict. German superiority was significantly demonstrated by the very existence of its own workers party. In contrast, the French had mere factions and the English were dependent primarily on trade unionism, co-operatives, utopian projects and philanthropy.

Engels closes his introduction to the English edition of Socialism: Utopian and Scientific as follows : But the triumph of the European working class does not depend upon England alone. It can only be secured by the co-operation of, a t least, England, France, and Germany. In both the latter countries the working class movement is well ahead of England. In Germany it is even within measurable distance of success. The progress is has there made during the last twenty-five years is unparalleled. It advances with ever-increasing velocity. If the German middle-class have shown themselves lamentably deficient in political capacity, discipline, courage, energy and perseverance, the German working class have given ample proof of all these qualities. Four hundred years ago, Germany was the starting-point of the first upheaval of the European middle class; as things now are, is it outside the limits of possibility that Germany will be the scene, too, of the first great victory of the European proletariat?7

II F. Engels, Der Sozialismus in Deutschland, Werke (Berlin, Diem Verlag, 1970), Band 22, p. 255. In his 1891 introduction to Marxs The Civil War in France Engels referred to German scientific socialism (MESW, Vol. 1, p. 481).

I MESW, Vol. 2, p. 115. Also see MESW, Vol. I , pp. 640-54.

M I C H A E L L E V l N 553

C O N C L U S I O N

By way of conclusion one should emphasize the major contribution that Marx and Engels made to the German Sonderenrwicklung literature. Theirs was the first significant analysis to locate Germanys peculiarity in terms of its social structure, and also inaugurated a line of enquiry echoed in significant and influential writings down to our own day-in the works of, for example, Mehring, Lukacs, Marcuse and Kiihn1,72 not to mention numerous others who would be embarrassed by the association.

In terms of our own century, it will be evident that the theory of Germanys leap forward to socialism has an obvious relevance to Bolshevism, just as Germanys weak liberal tradition was one of the many factors facilitating the rise of Nazism. Both these aspects, however, require more extended treatment than can be offered here.

For both Marx and Engels Germany remained a special concern. Fifty years after he first came to England Engels could still refer to the German Social Democrats as our part^'.'^ So, to the extent that they saw Germany as the major hope for advance to socialism, Marx and Engels can-surprisingly, and in rather a deviant manner-be related to the long tradition of German nationalist thought.

The relative significance of various statements by Marx and Engels must at least partially depend on the status attributed to the works from which they are taken. The present discussion assumes that the MuniJesto occupies a major place in the corpus of their writings and notes that throughout their lives they referred to the Munijesro in the warmest terms, regarding it as the first comprehensive statement of their position. 7 4

I t must be clear that in a number of ways Marx and Engels were less dogmatic than is often thought. We have noted that change need not be determined solely by internal economic and social factors. Chance, coincidence and geographical position can also play a part. Proximity to the Atlantic was mentioned as a factor favouring the rise of the bourgeoisie and lack of foreign invasion as a hindrance. Also, the path of historical development is evidently less straightforward than some of the shorter summaries (most obviously the 1859 Preface) appear to suggest. Helmut Fleischer has noted that what he calls Marxs homological approach is more evident in short summaries, prefaces, and postscripts, and that in more detailed studies axiomatic deduction from laws retreats behind complex description. Fleischer thus tries to read-out or dismiss the former as a tendency to rhetorical flourish or figure of speech,75 both of which distort what Marxism is really about. This approach might yield consistency but to deny the actuality of ambiguity and contradiction is an improper distortion of the facts and, in this instance, submerges the very real

2 F. Mehring, Ahsolurism mid Rivolurion in Gerniuns 152/-1848 (London. New Park Publications, 1975): G. Lukacs, Die Zersthwng der beniurz/i (Darmstadt und Neuwied, Luchterhand Verlag, 1973). Band I . Ch. I ; H. Marcuse, Reason urtd Rrvolurion (London. Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969); R. Kiihnl. Formen Burgerlicher Herrsc,bu/i: Liberdisntus- Faschismus (Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1976). See, for example. Marx and Engels, Werke, Band 22, pp. 243, 249: we in Germany in

MESW, Vol. I , p. 473; McLellan. Kurl M a n . His Lifb and Thought, p. 430. 4 Blackburn, Marxism: Theory of Proletarian Revolution, p. 13. 7 5 H. Fleischer, Murxisni and Hisrory (New York. Harper and Row, 1969), pp. 36, 35.


basis for the positivist Marxism of the Second International. A too assertive reduction of variety to whatever type of dogmatic uniformity might have its political justifications but is of little service to real understanding. Marxism certainly cannot be whatever we care to make it, but on certain themes there is a duality of attitudes that it would be misleading not to acknowledge. In this enquiry we have seen how Marx and Engels's particular investigations of German development pose difficult problems concerning compatibility with their general theory of history. This duality cannot be overcome or integrated into one consistent pattern. Michael Evans has noted that the Manifesto version of what a normal development constituted had been effectively discarded both by the changes Marx made to his economic theory and by his recognition of the various changes in political circumstances which followed in the wake of the failure of the 1848 revolutions. No coherent political theory was put forward to cope with the new phenomena. Indeed, both Marx and Engels continued to refer to the Manifesto as the classic outline of their political strategy.. . in fact the ambiguities of Marx's position mean that there will always be competing orthodoxies of interpretation.76

'' M. Evans, Karl Marx (London, 1975), p. 168.

Documents

MICHAEL LEVIN -- DEUTSCHMARX- MARX, ENGELS, AND THE GERMAN QUESTION