SOURCE: “Engels on Germany's Classes,” in his The Bourgeois Epoch, University of North Carolina Press, 1991, pp. 122-70.

[In the following essay, Hamilton examines Engels' writings on the German classes, comparing his various analyses on this topic and studying the logic and consistency of his conclusions. Hamilton finds that Engels' research and writings on the different classes in Germany contain flawed logic and numerous inconsistencies.]

This chapter will compare four analyses by Engels of developments in Germany, along with the more familiar account of The Communist Manifesto. As will be seen, several positions appear in these less-known historical writings. Put differently, several divergent “Marxisms” are contained in the original work. To be considered are, first, an Engels essay written in 1847 (but not published until 1929), “The Status Quo in Germany”; second, Engels's Germany: Revolution and Counter-Revolution, a series of articles written in 1851 and 1852; third, Engels's preface to the second edition of his book The Peasant War in Germany (1870); and fourth, an addendum to that preface, written for the third edition of The Peasant War (1874).

The principal tasks here will be those of exposition and analysis. A comprehensive empirical assessment of the historical claims contained in these works would require an extensive review of monographic studies. For the most part, therefore, the questions raised will focus on the logic and plausibility of the analyses. One can indicate logical inconsistencies and one can also make rule-of-thumb estimates of the possibilities, that is, of the likely “realism” of the claims. One can, moreover, indicate those points where the bold assertion lacks support, where the claim is nothing more than an unsubstantiated hypothesis in need of empirical assessment. On several key points, however, on questions of special importance where historical evidence is readily available, direct assessment of claims will be made. This first engagement, as indicated, will focus on German history from roughly 1840 to 1875. A brief review of that history is clearly in order.¹

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Three decades of peace and relative stability in continental Europe followed the defeat of Napoleon in 1815. The terms of the peace, the international arrangements, were worked out at the Congress of Vienna. With the Karlsbad Decrees of 1819, Prince Metternich, the Austrian chancellor, imposed a repressive domestic policy designed to reverse and suppress the liberal movement of the period. The leaders of the continental powers, basically, agreed on a mutual security arrangement designed to stabilize boundaries and to ensure their conception of the appropriate “domestic tranquility.” The period up to 1848, apart from some eruptions in 1830, was one of general stability or, perhaps better, of quiescence.

No Germany existed at that time—at least no state with that name. Instead, there was a German federation, a loose assemblage of thirty-eight states operating within the territory of the old Holy Roman Empire. The largest states in that federation, Austria and Prussia, at first shared the management of German affairs, the smaller states either following their lead or quietly attempting to pursue an independent course. Engels declared 1840 to be the turning point in this episode of the history. That date has a rather unexpected un-Marxian significance. It is the year in which Frederick William IV ascended the throne of Prussia. Some events were then set in motion, Engels alleges, that eventually culminated in the revolutions later in the decade. The first spark, undoubtedly the most important and the most dramatic of the series, came in Paris in February 1848. Uprisings followed in other European cities, in Munich, Milan, Vienna, Berlin, Budapest, and in many smaller centers.

That might be taken as proof for the Marxian case, as instances of the rising bourgeoisie attempting to displace a previous ruling class. But it is best not to prejudge the issue. At mid-century, the German states were still very backward economically. Britain's leading industrial center at that point was the city of Manchester. It was also Engels's home in the fifties and sixties. The city was a giant, rapidly growing manufacturing center with over 400,000 inhabitants. The nearest equivalent in the German states, the leading textile center for the time, was the city of Barmen, where Engels was born and raised. At mid-century it had not yet passed the 40,000 mark; it continued at that level, showing only modest growth, until the 1870s. The German economic takeoff, for all practical purposes, came only in the seventies; thus the image of powerful bourgeois contenders in the forties and fifties is, to say the least, somewhat premature. Marx and Engels read their interpretation into the events of 1848. But, given the laggard German development, it follows that the actual history must have had a strikingly different character.

In the end, all of the 1848 revolutions were defeated. In France, as noted, Louis Napoleon was elected president and then overthrew the Second Republic. In Austria, the military defeated the national uprising in northern Italy and, aided by Russian troops, defeated the national rising in Hungary. “Order” was then ultimately restored in Vienna. In Prussia, the undefeated army reentered Berlin and restored the authority of the monarch without having to fire a shot. The old order was restored also in the smaller states of Germany, in many instances with the assistance of Prussian troops. In Prussia, the newly secured regime promulgated a constitution. It was, at best, a modest advance over the pre-1848 arrangements.

A new period of quiescence followed. Marx and Engels made regular predictions about the forthcoming revolution. They saw it coming with the next downswing of the economy. But the next revolution was many decades away. When it did come, it was in markedly different circumstances; it was in November of 1918, as the final episode of the world war.

Two socialist parties had been founded in the 1860s. One, Prussia-based, was led by Ferdinand Lassalle; the second, based largely outside of Prussia, was led by Wilhelm Liebknecht and August Bebel, both of whom had close ties to Marx and Engels. The major events of that decade, however, were not generated by the working class. They were not the product of social history but, in great measure, stemmed from the maneuvers of Otto von Bismarck, minister president of Prussia. With remarkable cunning, he stimulated three quick wars in the course of six years. In 1864, in alliance with Austria, he moved against Denmark and captured the disputed territories, Schleswig and Holstein. Then, precipitating a struggle over the spoils, he moved against and defeated his former ally. The defeat of Austria at Königgrätz in July 1866 made Prussia the dominant power in the German-speaking world. Finally, in another effort of manipulation, Bismarck encouraged the gullible French emperor to attack. This allowed Bismarck to bring an array of smaller German states into a “defensive” alliance. This episode ended with the defeat of Louis Napoleon at the battle of Sedan in September 1870.

The culmination of this series of foreign-policy moves was a major achievement of domestic policy, Bismarck's unification of Germany. In January 1871, most of the German states joined together to form the new Reich (empire). Austria, rather ostentatiously, was left out of the new German unity. The King of Prussia, William I, was elevated to the rank of Kaiser (emperor).

That easy summary phrase—the unification of Germany—hides a wide range of contention and detail. There had been years of discussion over the boundaries (whether Grossdeutsch or Kleindeutsch, that is, big or small; with or without Austria; or, the same issue, whether with Catholic or Protestant dominance). Serious struggles also took place over the internal constitution of that unity. Marx and Engels favored the Grossdeutsch solution. For them the nationality and religious questions were of no significance and should have been discounted. Marx and Engels also favored a unitary centralized state. That would facilitate the development of a large, unified working class. But in both respects, despite their initial enthusiasm, Bismarck had failed them. He had created “small Germany” and, even worse, had created a federal state, one leaving many powers with the component states. The kings, dukes, and lesser rulers continued in their offices until 1918. Only foreign affairs (including tariffs) and the conduct of war were centralized, that is, were to be handled by national offices located in Berlin.

The two socialist parties experienced occasional reverses but, on the whole, showed considerable growth. A merger was achieved in 1875, at the Gotha conference, to create what soon became the world's leading socialist party, the Social Democratic Party of Germany (called, for short, the SPD). Marx and Engels paid considerable attention to these developments, guiding the party and attempting to direct its course. Although the most significant quantitative growth came outside the period under immediate review, one key episode, the struggle over the Agrarfrage, the farm question, did fall here, and Marx and Engels both intervened to affect the outcome. The resolution of that question was to have long-ranging implications for the political development of Germany.

For this discussion, one must follow the writings of Engels, who, in their informal division of labor, was the German specialist of the pair.

“THE STATUS QUO IN GERMANY”

The first Engels contribution to be considered here, a brief account entitled “Der Status Quo in Deutschland,” was written in the spring of 1847, less than a year before the Manifesto. Not published until 1929, in the Soviet Union, it does, nevertheless, provide us with a first view of the German topic. It is also, as will be seen, an unusually detailed and comprehensive account. One West German specialist, Iring Fetscher, declared “The Status Quo in Germany” to be “one of the most brilliant criticisms of the (German) bureaucracy and political backwardness to be written by a revolutionary intellectual in the nineteenth century.”²

The work begins with a discussion of the German bourgeoisie, contrasting it with the equivalent classes in England and France. The account, on the whole, is very much in keeping with standard Marxian views: it portrays a rising class aspiring to take power. The treatment is clear and unambiguous: “In Germany the bourgeoisie is not only not in power, it is even the most dangerous enemy of the existing governments.” He speaks in this connection of the “aspiring” (andrängende) bourgeoisie. The point is repeated in subsequent discussion, with Germany being contrasted with the two leading forerunners: “While in France and England the bourgeoisie has become powerful enough to overthrow the nobility and to raise itself to be the ruling class in the state, the German bourgeoisie has not yet had such power.”³

If not the bourgeoisie, who, then, does rule? One might think it was simply the aristocracy, but that was not Engels's position, at least not in the discussion that follows. “While in France and England the towns dominate the countryside, in Germany the countryside dominates the towns, agriculture dominates trade and industry.” He then turns, appropriately, to consider the nobility, “the class of big landed proprietors.” Their complete domination of society appears in the feudal system. But that system, he reports, has “everywhere declined” due to the rise of a competing “industrial class” (gewerbetreibende Klasse). That new class, one learns, is not the haute bourgeoisie, as one might anticipate, but rather the petty bourgeoisie (Kleinbürger). The outcome of this development, rather unexpectedly, is a compromise between the nobility and the petty bourgeoisie which “amounts to resigning power into the hands of a third class: the bureaucracy.” Since the nobility is the more powerful of the two (actually, “represents the more important branch of production”), members of that group hold the highest posts in the civil service, while the petty bourgeoisie must settle for the lower ones. “The petty bourgeoisie,” Engels declares, “can never overthrow the nobility, nor make itself equal to it; it can do no more than weaken it. To overthrow the nobility, another class is required, with wider interests, greater property and more determined courage: the bourgeoisie.”⁴

This formulation is distinctive in four respects: First, the discussion bypasses the monarchy entirely, treating it as of no importance. It is, to say the least, an unusual portrait of the Hohenzollerns, Habsburgs, Wittelsbachs, and the lesser royal families. Second, it assigns a power and a role to the petty bourgeoisie that is seldom seen elsewhere in the Marxian literature. Third, the portrait of rule is coalitional in character; that unexpected pluralist argument, seen in the previous chapter, appears again in this brief analysis. And fourth, there is an ad hoc delineation of a new class, the bureaucracy, a group not appearing in most accounts of the basic nomenclature; this class is treated as a dependent force, apparently, in some way, executing the will of the coalition partners. The latter claim, it should be noted, again bypasses consideration of the monarchy; the civil service serves this coalition of classes, not the king.

Engels next provides an extended discussion of the petty bourgeoisie, contrasting them with the bourgeoisie. It is one of the most detailed accounts to be found anywhere in the Marx-Engels work. The bourgeoisie grew out of the petty bourgeoisie in those countries sharing in world trade and large-scale industry, in those with free competition and concentration of property. The bourgeoisie engage in worldwide trade; the petty bourgeoisie, by contrast, deal locally or, at best, in a regional market. (Curiously, Engels makes no mention of the obvious intermediate option, of a national market.) Correspondingly, there appears a difference in the breadth of their outlooks: the petty bourgeoisie have only local concerns, but the bourgeoisie have general interests. The petty bourgeoisie settle for and are happy with small gains, indirect influence in national legislation being adequate for their purposes; participation in local administration is all that is required. The bourgeoisie, in contrast, cannot secure their interests without direct, continuous control over the central administration, foreign policy, and national legislation. This point has considerable importance for later discussion in this chapter: it says direct and continuous control is required over, effectively, all government operations. Engels here denies the representational possibility, that some other group or class could serve as its agent; the bourgeoisie itself must undertake the task. One final statement in this comparison touches on the differing politics of the two classes: “The petty bourgeois is conservative as soon as the ruling class makes a few concessions to him; the bourgeois is revolutionary until he himself rules.”⁵

Germany's bourgeoisie has a rather unexpected historical origin. Engels declares that “the creator of the German bourgeoisie was Napoleon.” It is a statement worthy of a Carlyle—or of a Treitschke (who argued that “men make history”). It was Napoleon's continental system and the resulting pressure for freedom of trade that gave Germany its modern industry and extended the development of mining. Then, already in 1818, the Prussian government felt compelled, much against its will, to create a protective tariff, this being its first official recognition of the new class. The Prussian Customs Union followed, and then the bourgeoisie “developed rather quickly.” Although lagging behind England and France, “it has nevertheless established most branches of modern industry, in a few districts supplanted peasant or petty-bourgeois patriarchalism, concentrated capital to some extent, produced something of a proletariat, and built fairly long stretches of railroad.”⁶

The 1818 arrangement, as W. O. Henderson has summarized it, “swept away some sixty internal duties, abolished prohibitions, admitted raw materials free of duty and levied import and consumption duties of only 10 percent on manufactured goods and 20-30 percent on colonial goods [foodstuffs] and wines.” Eliminating internal trade barriers and increasing the size of the trade territory are both key elements of the liberal program. A pure liberal might have wished no tariffs at all, but the Prussian program could easily be counted as “steps in the right direction,” especially since most import duties were “levied at much lower rates than those of other countries on the Continent.” Free trade, the abolition of the Corn Laws, it will be remembered, did not come to Britain until 1846.

An empirical question: Did the Prussian government only reluctantly institute the tariff? Historical research on the subject indicates just the opposite—the government (“the bureaucracy”) pursued the task with enthusiasm. It was relatively easy for that government to eliminate trade barriers within Prussia and to establish the 1818 tariff. Then, through sustained diplomatic efforts, the ministers succeeded in extending the arrangement to include other German states, yielding the Customs Union (Zollverein) of 1834. It was, Henderson declares, “the most liberal tariff in Europe.” The explanation for the zeal—of Prussia and of the other participating states—is very simple: following basic liberal principles, the move would mean substantial increases in trade and equally dramatic increases in state revenues. The Prussian civil servants responsible for Zollverein affairs, we are told, “had been educated at universities at which doctrines of the classical economists were taught.” It was the civil servants, moreover, who had taken the initiative; business leaders, generally supportive of the innovations, complained only that they had not been consulted.⁷

The actual history, in short, does not square with Engels's account of the bureaucracy. He has the top ranks filled with members of the aristocracy (an accurate portrait) and, presumably, serving the interests of that class. But the actual history shows them serving the interests of “the state.” Arguing liberal principles, they claimed their policy served also the general welfare. The actual history points to an independence or autonomy of the state (or the government, or the civil service). The policy was not something derived from (or “a reflection of”) the will or interests of a dominant (or rising) class. Engels's account misses this actual history; his treatment is such as to lend plausibility to the basic Marxian notion of the centrality of the classes.

Apart from the actual historical evidence, it should be noted, the logic of the argument is implausible. In 1818, it is argued, the Prussian government felt compelled (genötigt) to institute the tariff. But at that time the bourgeoisie must have had minuscule influence. It is only after the Zollverein (Engels omits the date, 1834) that he can speak of the “rather rapid development” of the class, it still, even in the twenties, thirties, and forties, lagging far behind its British and French equivalents. He has assigned an influence to that class which, at that early date, is most unlikely. There is also a motivational problem: why would the higher civil servants—aristocrats with interests opposed to the bourgeoisie—foster a policy that, presumably, would damage their class interests? It is clear from logic alone that something else must have been operating.

The rise of the bourgeoisie, Engels declares, meant a loss for the previously dominant classes. The German nobles, he claims, ever since Napoleonic times, had become more impoverished and burdened by debt. The ending of feudal labor services increased their costs; Russian, American, and Australian competition squeezed them. They failed, moreover, to use the newest developments in farm technology. The decline of the nobility, it should be noted, is not simply a function of economic facts. An important role is assigned to outlooks or attitudes, to laziness on the one hand and to profligacy on the other. The German nobles, Engels reports, like their English and French forerunners a century earlier, were squandering their fortunes. Engels writes: “Between the nobility and the bourgeoisie began that competition in social and intellectual education, in wealth and display, which everywhere precedes the political dominance of the bourgeoisie and ends, like every other form of competition, with the victory of the richer side. The provincial nobility turned into a Court nobility, only thereby to be ruined all the more quickly and surely. The three per cent revenues of the nobility went down before the fifteen per cent profit of the bourgeoisie.”⁸

The introduction of the attitudinal factor, of the element of will, changes the character of the analysis; it is no longer, strictly speaking, economic determinist. It thereby becomes contingent history; the nobility, if so disposed, could have made use of the newest advances in agriculture, could have given serious attention to the management of their estates, and could have refrained from ostentation and frivolous display.

The bourgeoisie, as noted repeatedly, is generally treated as an urban class, the word itself in its etymology signifying an urban base. But Engels here points to the appearance of bourgeois farmowners, to a new class of industrial landowners. The differences between them and the nobility are again, unexpectedly, matters of will or character rather than legal or purely economic ones. “This class carries on agriculture,” Engels declares, “without feudal illusions and without the nobleman's nonchalance, as a business, an industry, with the bourgeois appliances of capital, expert knowledge and work.” This agricultural segment of the bourgeoisie is essentially at one in outlook with its urban peers. Some of the nobility, those “wise enough not to ruin themselves,” joined with this industrial landowner class. Engels's conclusion here is that “the nobility has therefore become so impotent, that a part of it has already gone over to the bourgeoisie.”⁹

Engels returns again to discussion of the petty bourgeoisie. This class is weak in comparison with the nobility and, even more, in relation to the bourgeoisie. Indeed, after the peasants, it is “the most pathetic class that has ever meddled with history.” Its heyday was in the late middle ages, but even then its concern with petty local interests brought it only to local organizations, local struggles, and local advances. It led a tolerated existence alongside the nobility; nowhere, however, did it achieve a general political domination. With the coming of the bourgeoisie, the petty bourgeoisie loses “even the appearance of historical initiative.” At this point, the petty bourgeoisie, Engels writes, is caught in between, overwhelmed by the political power of the nobility and pressed by the economic power of the bourgeoisie. Given this position of conflict, Engels announces, the class divides into two factions; the richer, urban petty bourgeoisie, “more or less” timidly, joined the revolutionary bourgeoisie; the poorer faction, especially from the rural communities, joined with the nobles to protect the existing arrangement.

That all seems clear enough. However, in the same long paragraph one is provided with another scenario. Under current circumstances, in the prevailing status quo, the ruin of the petty bourgeoisie is certain, something clearly recognized by the poorer faction. Seeing their only chance in the possibility of mobility into the bourgeoisie, they follow the leadership of that class. The “more certain its ruin,” Engels declares, “the more it ranges itself under the banner of the bourgeoisie.”

When the bourgeoisie attains power, the petty bourgeoisie divides once again. At that point its members must either ally with the proletariat, an option mentioned only in passing, or surrender unconditionally to the bourgeoisie. This process had already occurred in England, most clearly in periods of economic downswing, and was currently to be seen in France. The same development is just beginning in Germany. It was only now in the phase of abandoning the nobility. The petty bourgeoisie, Engels concludes, “places itself every day more and more under the command of the bourgeoisie.”

To summarize, the petty bourgeoisie is backing away from the declining nobility. But, at the same time, it finds no clear positive option. Seen first in alliance with the nobility (those two classes staffing the bureaucracy), it then divides, one part maintaining the link, the other joining with the bourgeoisie. Then, in a third development, virtually the entire class submits to the bourgeoisie. A minor option, forming ties with the proletariat, as indicated, receives only a brief mention. For the moment, the German petty bourgeoisie has allied with—has entrusted its fate to—the bourgeoisie.¹⁰

The next class considered by Engels is the farmers (die Bauern), including here the smallholders and tenants. This account notes some similarity between farmers and the urban petty bourgeoisie. Unlike the Manifesto and The Class Struggles in France, it also recognizes a point of difference. Like the urban segment, this group is a “helpless class,” one incapable of any historical initiative. The two differ, however, in character. The farmers, it is said, show “greater courage” than the petty bourgeoisie. Where the absence of a nobility or bourgeoisie allows them to rule (Norway and the Alpine cantons of Switzerland are mentioned), they are given to “pre-feudal barbarianisms, local narrow-mindedness, and dull, fanatical bigotry.” On the positive side, Engels notes, they show “loyalty and rectitude.”

Where the farm class persists, as in Germany, the farmers find themselves squeezed, just like the petty bourgeoisie. Accordingly, one finds division in their ranks, the condition of the holding being the decisive factor. Some, those with larger farms—those in the east—tend to ally with the nobility. Elsewhere the tendency is to ally with the bourgeoisie. As with his discussion of the petty bourgeoisie, Engels makes no attempt at quantification. He does say, in a final passage, that they, “for the greatest part,” have put themselves at the disposal of the bourgeoisie. One might wonder, in the absence of any serious evidence on farmers' outlooks or behavior, how Engels knows about these mass reactions. At this point he gives us a clue as to his research procedures. “That this is actually the case,” Engels writes, “is proved by the Prussian provincial diets [legislatures].”¹¹ That rather imprecise proof assumes a direct, unbiased system of representation, broad suffrage, and free elections. But the comments of such spokesmen, at all times and places, must be recognized as providing, at best, only very oblique reflections of underlying mass opinion. Any such conclusions, therefore, must be viewed as extremely tenuous.¹²

Finally, Engels discusses the working class. His main task is to indicate the fragmentation present: the class contains farm laborers, day laborers, journeymen in the crafts, factory workers, and Lumpenproletariat . These groups are spread thinly over a wide territory with only a few weak points of concentration. As a result, it is difficult for them to develop an understanding of their common interests and to form themselves into a single class. They, as a consequence, focus on their respective immediate interests and see these linked to the conditions of their employers. Each segment, accordingly, forms an auxiliary army in the service of its employers. The farm laborers and day workers support the interests of the nobility or the farmer, and so on. The “Lump” fights for whoever pays a few Taler. The workers, clearly, are not at all prepared to take over the direction of public affairs.

Engels summarizes as follows: “The nobility is too much in decline, the petty bourgeoisie and peasants are, by their whole position in life, too weak, the workers are still far from sufficiently mature to be able to come forward as the ruling class in Germany. There remains only the bourgeoisie.”¹³

A more detailed discussion of the condition of the bourgeoisie follows. Its situation in Germany is compared with the experience of other nations, principally with England and France. The immediate conclusion, not at all unexpected in this case, is that Germany's bourgeoisie is destined to overturn the status quo. This follows both from the general historical experience and from the particular constellation of forces in Germany. Although only a small and relatively undeveloped class (especially as compared with those of England and France), its strength comes through its leadership of a broad combination of forces. Engels concludes that the bourgeoisie is “the only class in Germany which at least gives a great part of the industrial landowners, petty bourgeoisie, peasants, workers and even a minority among the nobles a share in its interests, and has united these under its banner.”¹⁴

Engels also reports on the state of bourgeois consciousness. It is the only class in Germany that has definite plans, that knows what to put in place of the status quo. He reports at some length on the aims of the bourgeoisie, on its plans and organization. It is a portrait of knowledge, understanding, and of actions designed to attain their ends. The portrait, in short, is one of a class having a high state of awareness and a will to action. In the familiar Marxian terms, it possesses a fully developed class consciousness; it is a class for itself.

Some additional questions are considered in the remaining pages of the incomplete manuscript. The principal concern is with the “why” question: Why does the bourgeoisie seek to overturn the status quo? These pages provide a rather detailed account of the fetters argument, of the obstacles placed in the way of bourgeois trade and industry by the old regime. It explains that class's needs, taking up matters on an issue-by-issue basis. In this respect it is a rare performance; most later discussions simply refer to the fetters, assuming the obviousness of the argument and neglecting the details. Exploration of those details here would require a major digression. One may focus, however, on the conclusion: Engels argues that the bourgeoisie must become the ruling class. Its interests must take priority in legislation, in administration, in the judiciary, in matters of taxes, and in the conduct of foreign policy. The logic of that “must” is neither clear nor all that compelling. The argument, moreover, has an all-or-nothing character—the bourgeoisie “must develop itself to the full … in order not to be ruined.” But there might be other possibilities: sharing power, muddling through, compromise arrangements (especially to be recommended for coalitions), representational alternatives, and so on. If the bureaucratic-monarchical regime could serve the nobility and the petty bourgeoisie, might it also be of service to the developing bourgeoisie?¹⁵

THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO

“The Status Quo in Germany” and the Manifesto show important differences in the character of the analyses. The first and perhaps the most striking difference, is the shift from complexity to simplicity. In the article, six classes receive at least a paragraph-long treatment. In the Manifesto, including the single paragraph on the Lumpenproletariat, there are four classes. The change, in part, stems from a difference in focus. The article deals with prerevolutionary Germany; hence the classes of two epochs are present and contending. The Manifesto is focused on the bourgeois era; the first and principal analytic section considers the dynamics of the presumably already-existing bourgeois epoch. Hence, for that reason, the nobility receives only a few casual mentions. The farm populations are there treated as part of the bourgeois economy and are classified with the petty bourgeoisie. The bureaucracy exists as a separate entity in “The Status Quo”; it is not present in the Manifesto.

Simplification occurs in still another way. “The Status Quo” recognizes the possibility of internal differentiation; some diversity of outlooks within classes is clearly indicated. The Manifesto, in contrast, provides strong categorical formulations—the bourgeoisie does this, the proletariat does that. The former work sees contending coalitions of forces; it is the alliance of the bourgeoisie with other groups that challenges the status quo. By itself, the bourgeoisie would be too weak to achieve the task. The Manifesto, in contrast, says nothing of such alliances. The bourgeoisie is a bold, competent, and capable class; it goes its way, charts its own course. The linkage with the Lumpenproletariat involves the purchase of services, something quite different from a conventional alliance. Differentiation within the bourgeoisie is recognized, but the minority factions defect; they “go over to” the workers rather than allying with them. It is the class-versus-class formulation of the Manifesto that has dominated subsequent thought, both in Marxist and non-Marxist analyses, rather than the coalition-versus-coalition portrayal.¹⁶

The coalitional focus, it will be noted, has a counterpart in contemporary thought, that is, in the pluralist framework. That line of theorizing, reaching back to Montesquieu and Tocqueville, assumes multiple centers of power and processes of negotiation between them to achieve satisfactory compromise results. Engels's “Status Quo” account clearly has a strong pluralist character. There is a recognition of the multiple power centers and, although not a strong emphasis, there is a recognition of the negotiated or compromise outcomes. But where the pluralists normally give consideration to the negotiations, discussing the terms of the compromise, Engels neglects that subject, treating the alliances as the natural or automatic outcomes of the larger social developments. The introduction of negotiations into the discussion would have problematical implications in that the determinist history would again become contingent. A role for the individual, for the shrewd, adept negotiator, would appear; moreover, one would also have to allow some place for the accident, for the fluke in such negotiation efforts.

There is also a problem of inconsistent predictions. The most important of these appears with respect to the petty bourgeoisie. In “The Status Quo,” that class is allied with the aristocracy and then, so it is claimed, will join with the bourgeoisie, that being the most forcefully stated option. Any links with the proletariat are mentioned only in passing. In the Manifesto, as was seen in Chapter I, the petty bourgeoisie either acts for itself, wishing to “roll back the wheel of history,” or, a part of it at least, joins with the workers. In the Manifesto, all segments of the class “fight against the bourgeoisie.” There is no suggestion of a “surrender” into the hands of the bourgeoisie. This indicates a remarkable flexibility of position within the span of only a few months.¹⁷

GERMANY: REVOLUTION AND COUNTER-REVOLUTION

The next account to be considered here is Engels's Germany: Revolution and Counter-Revolution. This work is a collection of articles that were written under Marx's name for the New York Daily Tribune in 1851 and 1852. Leonard Krieger, who edited the version to be used here, declares that “the work has been recognized as a classic by historians of all persuasions.” As a historical study, he adds, “its repute and its utility remain eminent.” He refers also to “the precedence which it has recently enjoyed over all the contemporary and even many of the subsequent histories of the 1848 revolution in Germany.”¹⁸

This history opens with a delineation of five classes (plus some “subordinate gradations”). Two classes mentioned briefly in “The Status Quo,” the industrial landowners and the Lumpenproletariat, do not appear here. The significance of those missing classes will be considered at a later point.

The first class discussed is the nobility. Again comparison is made with England and France, where feudalism was “entirely destroyed” or, in England, reduced to a “few insignificant forms” due to the efforts of a “powerful and wealthy middle class.” But in Germany “the feudal nobility” retained “a great portion of their ancient privileges,” including “jurisdiction over their tenants.” In addition to this “supremacy over the peasantry in their demesnes,” they were also exempt from taxes. The feudal arrangement was stronger in some localities than in others. Regional variation within Germany is a central theme found throughout Engels's discussion; there were, after all, thirty-eight separate states within the loosely organized German federation. The nobility, officially, was the first “Order” of the land. It “furnished the higher Government officials” and, almost exclusively, “officered the army.” One point deserves special emphasis: The nobility was not a ruling class. Engels is very clear on this point, referring to them as “deprived of their political privileges, of the right to control the princes.”¹⁹

The nobility in this 1851 portrait bears little resemblance to that of Engels's 1847 account. There is nothing on their backwardness, on their failure to use modern technique; there is nothing on their outlooks, on either laziness or profligacy; there is nothing on their competition with the bourgeoisie for status, nothing on their “three per cent incomes”; and there is nothing on their role as “flunkies” at court. In 1847, Engels places great emphasis on their relative impoverishment. In 1851, that also disappears, the only comment now being that some of them are “very wealthy.”

The bourgeoisie, in this account, is portrayed as relatively weak and backward, but growing in strength. It is certainly not the bourgeoisie of England or France. The most serious problem is that of division, there being no large centers of trade or manufacturing. Much of the trade passes through foreign ports, Dutch and Belgian principally, thus creating the bourgeoisie of other nations. There is, moreover, the problem of division into some three dozen states. The basic problem was a want of numbers and particularly of concentrated numbers; this prevented them from taking power, as was done in the leading capitalist nations.

The governments of Germany were “compelled to bow,” reluctantly, he says, to the immediate material interests of the bourgeoisie. Engels again mentions the Prussian tariff of 1818 and the Zollverein as prime examples. It was, however, a seesaw struggle, the governments, in subsequent periods of reaction, recapturing ground previously lost. The argument of fetters on trade and industry appears again, this time without any detailed specification. Bourgeois activity is “checked” by the political constitution of the nation, by the “random division” of territory “among thirty-six princes with conflicting tendencies and caprices,” by “the feudal fetters upon agriculture and the trade connected with it,” and by the “prying superintendence” of an “ignorant and presumptuous bureaucracy.” Despite these obstacles, trade continued to grow, bourgeois links and consciousness to develop. The commercial classes of the various states were brought closer together, their interests equalized, and their strength centralized. The “natural consequence,” Engels reports, is that the “whole mass” of them passed into the camp of the Liberal Opposition. He gives this move a precise date, 1840, described as “the moment when the bourgeoisie of Prussia assumed the lead of the middle-class movement of Germany.”²⁰

The next class discussed is the petty bourgeoisie. That expression, however, is not used; here it is referred to as the “small trading and shopkeeping class.” Because of the limited development of the bourgeoisie, this class has special importance in Germany. “In the larger towns,” Engels writes, “it forms almost the majority of the inhabitants; in the smaller ones it entirely predominates [due to] the absence of wealthier competitors or influence.” Engels assigns this class a considerable role in the revolutionary events of 1848. “During the recent struggles,” he says, “it generally played the decisive part.”

Once again we have a discussion of the distinctive intermediate position of this class. Its members are, he says, “eternally tossed about” between “the hope of entering the ranks of the wealthier class, and the fear of being reduced to the state of proletarians or even paupers.” Unlike the bourgeoisie, which knows its position, and unlike the proletariat which soon will know where it stands, the petty bourgeoisie is “extremely vacillating” in its views. The class is “humble and crouchingly submissive” under feudal or monarchical governments; it turns “to the side of Liberalism” under the ascendant middle class and is even “seized with violent democratic fits” when the middle class “has secured its own supremacy.” But then, when the proletariat attempts its own independent movement, the class “falls back into the abject despondency of fear.” All these positions, he says, are evidence in the events of the German revolution.²¹

This portrait of the petty bourgeoisie, the third of the Marx-Engels portraits reviewed thus far in this chapter, differs markedly in the specific assertions made about the class. The Manifesto had it that they would either be reactionary or, those recognizing their fate, would join with the workers. The former option is not mentioned specifically here, although the “abject despondency of fear” statement might be an oblique reference to that possibility. The second option, joining with the workers, is not mentioned at all. The development described in “The Status Quo,” the alliance of petty bourgeoisie and nobility sharing power through the bureaucracy, also is not mentioned in Revolution and Counter-Revolution. The minor option mentioned in “The Status Quo,” alliance with the proletariat, has disappeared. The major alternative mentioned there, “unconditional surrender” to the bourgeoisie or serving “under the command of the bourgeoisie,” may be implicit in at least two phases of the present sequence, although here the relationship appears freely chosen as opposed to the helpless “act of submission” of the earlier work. And finally, where that earlier work left the class under the command of the bourgeoisie, the last act in the 1851 scenario has them leaving that command, evidently to support the monarchy.

Engels again is showing unusual flexibility in his statement of the petty bourgeoisie's role. The recurrent evidence problem surfaces once again: How could Engels have known about the reactions of hundreds of thousands of persons scattered across “three dozen” central European states? It is clear that no adequate epistemological method—way of knowing—was available at that time and that he, to put it simply, was freely extemporizing.

The German working class, like that nation's bourgeoisie, has a laggard development. This is the only place where Engels's discussion is clearly dialectical in character. The working class develops in opposition to the bourgeoisie. “Like master, like man,” he writes. But the “mass” of German workers are employed “by small tradesmen, whose entire manufacturing system is a mere relic of the Middle ages.” The consequence is a lack of development, an absence of modern ideas. Just as there is “an enormous difference between the great cotton lord and the petty cobbler or master tailor, so there is a corresponding distance from the wide-awake factory operative of modern manufacturing Babylons to the bashful journeyman tailor or cabinet-maker of a small country town, who lives in circumstances and works after a plan very little different from those of the like sort of men some five hundred years ago.”

Given the condition, it was not surprising, as Engels reports, that “at the outbreak of the Revolution, a large part of the working classes should cry out for the immediate re-establishment of guilds and Mediaeval privileged trades corporations.” That reactionary tendency has been well documented in later scholarship. That single sentence is the only statement in the entire account that recognizes the backward-looking character of the working-class movement of 1848. Beginning with the next sentence, Engels turns to the opposite movement, to consideration of the emerging radical tendencies. In the manufacturing districts where the “modern system of production” predominated, where greater movement and communication was possible, a different “mental development” was possible. There, a “strong nucleus” formed “whose ideas about the emancipation of their class were far clearer and more in accordance with existing facts and historical necessities; but they were a minority.” Those qualified formulations disappear in his later pages. There, even before the March revolution, “the working classes of the larger towns looked for their emancipation to the Socialist and Communist doctrines.” And a page later, he reports that “the proletarians were preparing to hurl down the bourgeoisie.”²²

The fifth and last category considered in this account is “the great class of small farmers, the peasantry.” Together with the farm laborers, it constitutes “a considerable majority of the entire nation.” This class, Engels reports, is divided into four subcategories or factions. These are the more wealthy farmers (who have allied with the “antifeudal middle class of the towns”); the small freeholders, a group that is, on the whole, impoverished, burdened by mortgages, and so forth; feudal tenants—those not easily turned off the land, persons obliged to pay “perpetual” rents or labor services; and the agricultural laborers. The last three groups “never troubled their heads much about politics” before the revolution. Although they see new opportunities for themselves in that development, Engels does not portray them as actors in those events. It is evident, he says, something “borne out by the history of all modern countries,” that the farm population, being dispersed and unable to develop their ideas and to coordinate action, “never can attempt a successful independent movement; they require the initiatory impulse of the more concentrated, more enlightened, more easily moved people of the towns.”

Wealthy farmers, the Gross and Mittel-Bauern, it will be noted, are explicitly declared to be a faction of “the great class of the small farmers, the peasantry,” although that does not seem appropriate. The “class of industrial landowners” of “The Status Quo” has disappeared as a separate category. The second and third factions, freeholders and tenants, classified with the farm class in “The Status Quo” and with the petty bourgeoisie in the Manifesto, are again part of the farm class. No clear role is attributed to them in this work: they had an opportunity, saw it, and did nothing with it. Farm laborers, explicitly excluded from the farm class in “The Status Quo,” presumably to be counted as proletarians, now are counted along with the Gross, Mittel, and Klein farm proprietors. The inconsistent placement had no great significance because, according to Engels, none of the factions played a serious role in the revolutionary events he is describing.

That portrait of do-nothing farm populations, however, is not accurate. Violence was widespread in the German countryside in the year prior to the revolution, with burning of manor houses a frequent event. The farm populations showed considerable “initiating impulse.” Engels's treatment of the historical record here involves serious distortion. He makes much of minor working-class skirmishes (for example, the “insurrections” of Silesian and Bohemian weavers) but gives no attention to the much more serious farm insurgency. For those not knowing anything of the history, that selection would confirm Engels's claims—that the future would be decided by the proletariat and that farm populations generally would count for nothing in the unfolding drama.²³

The German case, in contrast to Britain and France, is complicated by the diversity problem, that is, by the presence of many states (or statelets). The contending classes have a different mix in “every district, in every province.” Moreover, there is no great center, no London or Paris, where a decisive battle could occur. There is, accordingly, a necessity for “fighting out the same quarrel over and over again in every single locality.” Given such “incoherence,” it is not at all surprising that Marx and Engels were ardent supporters of German unification; it would simplify all of that complexity and allow a rapid acceleration of the historical development.

The previous paragraphs summarize Engels's first Daily Tribune article, which briefly describes the five classes of his nomenclature and gives some indication of their dispositions in the 1848 struggles. It is not at all clear from this particular account which sides were contending. Given the trained expectation of a class struggle, one might anticipate a conflict of bourgeoisie against aristocracy. But that is not the case. The antagonists, the defenders in the struggle, are the monarchies headed by the princes. The protagonists, the revolutionary forces, are arrayed against political regimes, not against ruling classes. Engels's portrayal of these regimes, initially at least, is rather nebulous, providing no clear link to the just-described classes. At the opening of the second article, for example, they are described as “half-feudal, half-bureaucratic Monarchism.” Those regimes, it will be noted, are autonomous political agencies. Engels has indicated earlier that the aristocracy had been deprived of political power; power now was in the hands of monarchs and their agencies, principally, bureaucracy and army. Those regimes stand outside the classes and interests he has delineated. No sooner is the Marxian class analysis under way than the strict lines of that framework are abandoned.

Most knowledgeable persons would expect a structural analysis to follow, one proceeding independently of persons and individual motives; in fact, in the opening pages, Engels promises just that kind of analysis. His actual analysis, however, centers on individuals, their whims and fancies. In his discussion of Prussia, the subject of the second article, he focuses on the king, Frederick William IV, who came to the throne in 1840. That date is given repeatedly as the beginning point of the new ferment. The king's political preferences and his foibles, speeches, and behavior are reviewed at length, the net result, it is said, being “to estrange from him the sympathies of the middle class.”²⁴

An extended discussion of the troubled relationship of king and bourgeoisie follows. The conflict resulted in a high level of consciousness on the part of the middle classes. They knew they were “on the eve of a revolution and prepared themselves for it.” For this purpose they “sought to obtain by every possible means the support of the working class of the towns, and of the peasantry in the agricultural districts.” Curiously, Engels omits the petty bourgeoisie, the class that he said played the decisive part in the towns. It is a puzzling observation: Why would the bourgeoisie neglect its most obvious ally in this struggle? Why would bourgeois leaders instead attempt to mobilize two rather distant classes, ones that would be disposed to dangerous positions on questions of suffrage, indebtedness, and property?

The final paragraph of this discussion depicts two contending coalitions—not a polar confrontation of opposed classes. Engels's summary reads:

While the higher nobility and the older civil and military officers were the only safe supports of the existing system; while the lower nobility, the trading middle classes, the universities, the schoolmasters of every degree, and even part of the lower ranks of the bureaucracy and military officers were all leagued against the Government; while behind these there stood the dissatisfied masses of the peasantry, and of the proletarians of the large towns, supporting, for the time being, the Liberal Opposition, but already muttering strange words about taking things into their own hands; while the bourgeoisie was ready to hurl down the Government, and the proletarians were preparing to hurl down the bourgeoisie in its turn; this Government went on obstinately in a course which must bring about a collision.

A similar portrait appears at the end of the following article, one focused on the smaller states of Germany. Again it is an account of “a heterogeneous mass of opposition,” this “more or less led by” the bourgeoisie.²⁵

The basic portrait offered in Revolution and Counter-Revolution differs considerably from that provided in the Manifesto. The former account, like the “Status Quo” article, depicts a struggle of coalitions, one weak and fumbling, the other large, angry, and confident. The account does not show, as in the Manifesto, a sharp class-versus-class confrontation; it does not show a class struggle. This divergence, however (as noted in the discussion of “The Status Quo”), does not represent a contradiction but stems rather from a difference in focus. The Manifesto gives only a truncated portrait of the historical process and thus provides a misleading clue to the larger framework.²⁶ It begins with a bourgeoisie already in power and concentrates on the end-phase of the capitalist epoch. The final struggle, so it is announced, will find “two great classes directly facing each other.” In that struggle, the proletariat, a powerful, self-conscious majority, will have no particular need for allies. The options available to the bourgeoisie, as compared with earlier points in the epoch, will be limited and without promise, since only the dwindling petty bourgeoisie and the Lumpenproletariat remain. Given the unreliable character of both segments and given the odds against them, negotiations by the bourgeoisie could not significantly alter the situation. The pluralist analysis, in short, would no longer be applicable in the end-phase of the epoch.

But in those previous struggles, in those assumed (and bypassed) in the Manifesto, the conflict would have had a different character, one for which a pluralist analysis would be most appropriate. In fact, only with difficulty could it be avoided. With aristocracy and bourgeoisie together not making up even 10 percent of the population, any social conflict would, almost of necessity, involve coalitions of forces. There would, in other words, be considerable incentive for the principal contenders to seek aid from among “the other 90 percent.” Accounts of those earlier struggles would have to consider discussions of the terms; they would have to consider quid pro quo arrangements—what rewards for what support? Analyses of the defeats, where appropriate, would also have to consider the unraveling of those agreements. What led participants to withdraw from a coalition? What led some to change sides?

Engels provides only a brief sketch of the revolutionary coalition. He assumes the bourgeoisie to be revolutionary in orientation. He declares the movement to be “more or less” under bourgeois direction. Other groups seeking redress of their grievances have been drawn into this effort. But no serious evidence is provided to back up any of these claims. No evidence is offered to show the revolutionary orientations of the bourgeoisie. We have nothing on the bourgeois leadership, and no detail is provided on the negotiations necessary to form the coalition. Some important considerations, in short, are missing from Engels's analysis.

Something must also be said about the other contender in the revolutionary struggle, the “half-feudal, half-bureaucratic” monarchical regimes. They evidently are in power. It is also evident that these regimes are not reducible to (that is, are not the agencies of) any of the five classes described in the opening article. Individual rulers now appear, and their outlooks and orientations make a difference. In the Prussian case, Frederick William's peculiarities play a “decisive part” in stimulating the formation of the opposition. These rulers, moreover, do not stand alone; they operate through a bureaucracy, a civil service. And just as decisively—a key aspect of the arrangement—they operate with the aid of armies. The entire cluster—monarch, bureaucracy, army—stands outside Engels's basic analytic framework. Since he cannot very well ignore these ruling agencies, they enter through the back door, in ad hoc discussions. This means there is no serious analysis of the key agencies in the struggle, of the so-called absolute monarchies. Those agencies, therefore, have a phantom existence in his account.

One should, in addition to these purely analytical objections, consider the empirical implications of Engels's analysis. If the bourgeoisie was “more or less” organizing the effort, that should be reflected in the surviving documentary record. A simple question arises: Where is that leadership role empirically established? If the bourgeoisie were as unified and conscious as Engels claims, that too should be indicated in the documentary record. Again some simple questions: Is that the case? Do the letters, diaries, memoirs, pamphlets, etc., written by the bourgeoisie (especially by the leaders of that class) show such awareness? Were they seething with resentment over the fetters imposed by the monarchical regimes? Did they actively seek to replace those regimes? Did they make contacts and negotiate with that range of allies in order to implement their aims? One would have to demonstrate all these things in order to establish Engels's case. Such a demonstration would probably be beyond Engels's reach, especially given his day-to-day obligations and commitments in Manchester and given the lack there of prime source material. But for the historical researcher in the intervening 130 years, for the diligent and concerned social historian, provision of that documentation should be a relatively easy task—if the claims were accurate. And if they were not accurate, if the bourgeoisie was thinking or doing something else entirely, that too should long since have been established.

Diefendorf provides an answer with respect to businessmen in the Prussian Rhineland. He notes the relatively close contact that existed between business and government, first achieved under the French occupation, then carried over by the new Prussian administration after 1815. The relationship deteriorated somewhat after 1830, after the passing of the reform generation of Prussian bureaucrats. This did not, however, “lead to any sort of revolutionary opposition.” Businessmen remained “politically loyal [to] the Prussian state.” Although opposed to specific policies and wishing to see reforms, they “did so as a loyal opposition, seeking improvements in a system that they basically approved of.” The Rhenish liberal businessmen “wanted a fair share in directing the state, not complete control or sovereignty, over it. They wanted to join the crown and bureaucracy as leaders, not to replace them.” A reaction did occur in the 1840s; this was stimulated, as Engels rightly observes, by Frederick William's arbitrariness and by his appointment of conservatives in the bureaucracy. But this led businessmen to join the movement for constitutional reform—not one for revolutionary change.²⁷

On the eighteenth of March 1848, Engels reports, “the people of Berlin rose in arms and, after an obstinate struggle of eighteen hours, had the satisfaction of seeing the king surrender himself into their hands.” That portrayal is, to say the least, somewhat misleading. In a muddled decision-making process, the king and his advisers and generals agreed that the troops should be withdrawn from Berlin and that a siege was to follow. But the execution of the plan was flawed in that the army exited before the royal family was evacuated, and thus, as a result of a blunder, the king was obliged to “surrender himself.” The army, it should be noted, was not defeated in that obstinate struggle. Engels's treatment of the revolutionary events in Germany, it should be noted, parallels Marx's account of the February revolution in Paris in two respects. It is brief: he gives only one sentence to the revolution in Berlin. Marx also, it will be remembered, failed to mention a crucial fact—the withdrawal of undefeated troops.

No attempt was made to abolish the monarchy, to declare a republic. Despite widespread dissatisfaction with the incumbent, Frederick William was not deposed. No Revolutionary Council intervened to take over (or even to circumscribe) his right to rule. These facts provide telling evidence about the aims of the revolutionaries. They clearly had no intention of overthrowing the regime.²⁸

The remainder of the revolutionary history may be easily summarized. The Prussian king named a new cabinet led by two eminent bourgeois notables: Ludolf Camphausen was appointed minister president of the reform government; David Hansemann was named finance minister. A Prussian assembly began work on a new constitution. Within a few months, however, the Prussian king and his circle, a group of tough reactionaries referred to as the camarilla, took heart. In November, the king ordered his still-intact, undefeated troops to reenter Berlin, and, without firing a shot, he reestablished control. The revolutionary insurgents of March had disappeared, had changed position, or had lost the will to fight. In early December, the king dissolved the constituent convention and, by royal decree, promulgated the constitution that remained in force until 1918.

A more important body, the National Assembly, was elected by “independent citizens,” with delegates chosen in all German states. It met and discussed in Frankfurt, in the Paulskirche. The Frankfurt Assembly, in March 1849, offered the king an emperor's crown, inviting him to reign over the new, democratic united Germany. But he refused it; he would not accept such a gift “from the gutter.” Eventually, with Prussian troops, the revolution was defeated in all the states of northern and western Germany. In Austria a more complicated history had been played out because of the ethnic and national complexities, specifically because of the Italian uprising and the Hungarian insurgency against Vienna's rule. But there too, the result was the same: the Austrian military, aided by Russian troops in Hungary, defeated the revolution at all points. The decisive agency in both contexts was the army, not a class or coalition of classes. This led Engels, belatedly, to a recognition of its importance and of its autonomy. “The army,” he declared, “again was the decisive power in the State, and the army belonged not to the middle classes but to themselves.” We have here a new agency and a new hypothesis—that the military, under some circumstances at least, can be an agency acting on its own behalf, that is, für sich.²⁹

How does Engels deal with the counterrevolution? Basically, his “analysis” consists of a heavy ad hominem attack on the bourgeois ministers in Prussia and on the representatives in the National Assembly. Camphausen and Hansemann, the two key cabinet appointees in Prussia, are attacked for their faintheartedness, for their fears (of revolutionary workers), and for their inactivity. Described as “poor deluded wretches,” they are faulted for their zeal to restore “order” and for their failure to carry through any serious changes. “Not a single bureaucrat or military officer was dismissed,” he writes, “not the slightest change was made in the old bureaucratic system of administration.” It is curious: in place of analysis or some argument stemming from the initial theoretical statement, we find personal attack, the imputation of fault, and blame. In the first paragraphs of the first article, Engels had announced that the causes of the defeat “are not to be sought for in the accidental efforts, talents, faults, errors, or treacheries of some of the leaders.” But here, in one key episode, he focused exclusively on the faults and errors of two leaders.³⁰

Engels's angry condemnation of the bourgeoisie comes in lieu of the appropriate step—provision of a straightforward conclusion. It might read as follows: Our prediction, that the bourgeoisie would at least attempt to take power, has not been confirmed; in this case, at least, the claim has proven mistaken. That conclusion, in turn, should have stimulated a review and reconsideration of the original argument. Engels's procedure, however, is akin to that of a physicist berating cowardly particles for their untoward behavior or that of a botanist railing against plants for failing to confirm his prediction about the inheritance of recessive traits. Condemnation of the key actors in the historical drama is a theory-saving device; it deflects attention from the key fact, that the claim was not supported. This procedure continues to assume, despite the immediate failure, that the prediction is justified, that it is correct.

That faultfinding, moreover, departs from the basic commitment to scientific history; it no longer is delineating and explaining fact but, rather, is invoking normative judgments. It is Engels's standard, moreover, that provides the basis for judgment, or, more broadly, it is that of the Marx-Engels position; it is their conception of what the bourgeoisie should be doing. But that avoids a basic empirical question: How did they, Camphausen and Hansemann, see things? What did they want? What were their priorities? Did they see the institution of a bourgeois regime as a first priority or even at this moment as important? That reading of bourgeois motivations, basically, is dependent on Marx and Engels's assumptions. But if Camphausen and Hansemann did not adopt the Marx-Engels program as their own, they can hardly be faulted for neglecting it.

An alternative possibility is that Camphausen and Hansemann's reading of events was accurate, that they did what was the right, wise, or appropriate thing to defend the interests of the bourgeoisie. Put differently, it is possible that Marx and Engels were mistaken about the bourgeoisie's appropriate response. Diefendorf describes bourgeois reactions to the outcome of the revolution in Prussia as follows: “A Prussian national legislature was created, the members to be elected by a three-class electorate, the voting weighted in favor of the propertied classes, and the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary was established. Remaining feudal privileges were abolished, and censorship was ended. Many of these reforms resemble the proposals made by Hansemann in 1830; in fact, he served on the commission that modeled the new national franchise on the Rhenish three-class franchise of 1845. Certainly the Rhenish business leaders were basically satisfied with the results of the revolution in Prussia.” All of the businessmen active during the revolution, Diefendorf declares, “strongly endorsed” the new Prussian constitution decreed by the king. Gustav Mevissen, one of the business leaders, said it offered more “than pre-March Rhenish liberalism had hoped for.”³¹

It was the immobility of the new bourgeois government that, presumably, led the other parties of the revolutionary coalition—petty bourgeoisie, workers, and farmers—to defect, to drop their support for the enterprise. Again Engels's treatment is very sparse, providing little discussion of the terms of the trade—what, for example, did the workers want? And what could the new bourgeois government give? Discussion of the pluralist bargaining, of the negotiation, is missing. This allows him to avoid an important conclusion—the new government was not able to pay off its presumed allies. They were certainly not able to pay off the workers with money, with increased wages; as good liberals concerned with eliminating fetters, they were not about to restore guild privileges. Where Engels is arguing that they had positive options, that they could have saved the situation, his vague calls for decisive action hide the actual options facing them. The only area in which they could have taken decisive action was the political sphere, by taking control of the military and of the police. Engels, it appears, wished the bourgeoisie had used force; the imposition of their plans was the appropriate course of action. But that, of course, again assumes they wanted to take power. It assumes they would have seen their interests enhanced by such a bold move.

The failure of 1848, in Engels's view, was a function of the weakness of the bourgeoisie, too small in numbers and too timid in execution of its task; the revolutionary coalition, as a consequence, fell apart and dissolved. The situation is summarized as follows:

It was, in fact, evident, even from the beginning of the revolutionary drama, that the Liberal bourgeoisie could not hold its ground against the vanquished, but not destroyed, feudal and bureaucratic parties except by relying upon the assistance of the popular and more advanced parties; and that it equally required, against the torrent of these more advanced masses, the assistance of the feudal nobility and of the bureaucracy. Thus, it was clear enough that the bourgeoisie in Austria and Prussia did not possess sufficient strength to maintain their power, and to adapt the institutions of the country to their own wants and ideas. The Liberal bourgeois ministry was only a halting-place from which, according to the turn circumstances might take, the country would either have to go on to the more advanced stage of Unitarian Republicanism, or to relapse into the old clerico-feudal and bureaucratic regime.

What eventuated, obviously, was a relapse. But the 1848 events, Engels assures his readers, was but the first act of the revolutionary drama. Given the same causes, the same tendencies, the next act would find a larger, more aware, and more confident bourgeoisie—and a weaker feudal-clerical-bureaucratic monarchical regime. The work ends with the assurance that soon, after “probably [a] very short interval of rest,” we shall see the “beginning of the second act of the movement.”³²

PREFACE TO THE PEASANT WAR IN GERMANY

That second act was obviously delayed, and thus, some years later, an explanation was needed. One such account appears in a brief preface to the second edition of Engels's The Peasant War in Germany. In his original preface, written in 1850, he had spoken of Germany's “modern big bourgeoisie” and had claimed this class was “quickly subjugating” the princes of Germany by means of the state debt. By 1870, when Engels wrote the second preface, it was clear that such was not the case, and he therefore reversed his position, indicating now that “too much honour was given to the German bourgeoisie.” It could have quickly subjugated the monarchy “by means of the State debt” but failed to use the opportunity.³³

Describing first the recent Austrian events, he says that nation “fell as a boon into the lap of the bourgeoisie after the war of 1866.” But then, he adds, “the bourgeoisie does not understand how to govern. It is powerless and incapable in everything.” Turning to Prussia, he discusses the constitutional struggle there in which Bismarck had recently subjugated the Prussian legislature. Again the bourgeoisie, although possessing a majority in the chamber, did not move to take control. Engels does not wish to blame the “National Liberals” for this collapse; they, after all, had been forsaken by their clientele, by “the mass of the bourgeoisie.” That mass, it seems, “does not wish to govern. 1848 is still in its bones.”³⁴

Although some advances of bourgeois interests were made in the intervening period, this was all “within limits befitting bureaucracy.” This “system of bureaucratic concessions,” incidentally, is described as “the main evil.” The source of the problem, once again, is not the previously dominant class, the aristocracy; it is, rather, “the government.” One of the principal tasks of the new preface is to explain and to account for cowardice: “How, then, is it possible that the bourgeoisie has not conquered political power, that it behaves in so cowardly a manner toward the government?”³⁵

The explanation, he declares, is that the German bourgeoisie is a latecomer on the scene. Its “period of ascendency” coincides with the “downward path” of the bourgeoisie in “other western European” countries, that is, England and France. In England, one is told (as was noted earlier, in Chapter 2), that “the bourgeoisie could place its real representative, Bright, into the government only by extending the franchise which in the long run is bound to put an end to its very domination.” In France, he reports, “the bourgeoisie, which for two years only, 1849-50, had held power as a class under the republican regime, was able to continue its social existence only by transferring its power to Louis Bonaparte and the army.”³⁶ The basic problem is that the growth of the bourgeoisie entails the growth of the proletariat. It is fear of the proletariat, first clearly recognized in 1848 in the June Days in Paris, that causes the hesitation, that leads the bourgeoisie to reject its historic mission.

Sensing the threat, recognizing the presence of the proletariat, of this “second self” that has outgrown it, the bourgeoisie “loses the power for exclusive political dominance.” At this point, Engels announces, the bourgeoisie “looks for allies with whom to share its authority, or to whom to cede all power, as circumstances may demand” (emphasis added). The point is summed up as follows:

In Germany, this turning point came for the bourgeoisie as early as 1848. The bourgeoisie became frightened, not so much by the German, as by the French proletariat. The battle of June, 1848, in Paris, showed the bourgeoisie what could be expected. The German proletariat was restless enough to prove to the bourgeoisie that the seed of revolution had been sown also in German soil. From that day, the edge of bourgeois political action was broken. The bourgeoisie looked around for allies. It sold itself to them regardless of price, and there it remains.

These allies are all of a reactionary turn. It is the king's power, with his army and his bureaucracy; it is the big feudal nobility; it is the smaller Junker; it is even the clergy. The bourgeoisie has made so many compacts and unions with all of them to save its dear skin, that now it has nothing more to barter. And the more the proletariat developed, the more it began to feel as a class and to act as one, the feebler became the bourgeoisie.³⁷

Once again we see a remarkable revisionist portrait, even more of a deviation than the previous ones reviewed. Again we see the need for a coalition of forces, for negotiation and concession. Once again, in other words, we find this other, this pluralist Marxism. But this time, going a significant step farther down the revisionist road, we have a bourgeoisie that has given up the demand for power, that now, because of an assortment of deals, is no longer capable of taking power. Power must now be shared with a collection of allies.

Engels next considers the German proletariat. He reviews various indicators to show the growth of proletarian consciousness. The working class of Germany, Engels notes, is more advanced than its counterparts elsewhere. “It is to the credit of the German workers,” he writes, “that they alone have managed to send workers and workers' representatives into the Parliament—a feat which neither the French nor the English had hitherto accomplished.” But this class forms only a minority of the German people, and, as a consequence, it too is “compelled to seek allies.” The only possible allies are the petty bourgeoisie, the Lumpenproletariat of the cities, the small peasants, and the wage workers of the land. The remainder of the preface is devoted to discussion of each of these possibilities.

The petty bourgeoisie, master artisans, and merchants remain unchanged, Engels writes. “They hope to climb up to the big bourgeoisie, and they are fearful lest they be pushed down into the ranks of the proletariat. Between fear and hope, they will in times of struggle seek to save their precious skin and to join the victors when the struggle is over. Such is their nature.” The basic point is repeated later: The class is “entirely unreliable except when a victory has been won. Then its noise in the beer saloons is without limit.” Engels's only positive statement about this class is that “there are good elements among it, who, of their own accord, follow the workers.” Of the several options delineated earlier, the vacillation thesis is now given the principal emphasis.³⁸

The Lumpenproletariat once again comes in for unrelieved condemnation: “This scum of the decaying elements of all classes, which establishes headquarters in all the big cities, is the worst of all possible allies. It is an absolutely venal, an absolute brazen crew.” Any working-class leader making use of these “gutter-proletarians,” he declares, “proves himself by this action alone a traitor to the movement.”

Turning to the farm populations, Engels here makes two changes in his portrayal. In Revolution and Counter-Revolution, it will be remembered, the more wealthy farmers, the Gross and Mittel-Bauern, were treated as a faction of “the great class of small farmers, the peasantry.” That segment was allied with the “antifeudal middle class of the towns.” In the preface, they are reclassified. The “bigger peasants,” Engels notes, in a brief parenthetical statement, “belong to the bourgeoisie.” He later refers to “middle and large land ownership” and, along with “the large peasants,” to the “still larger feudal masters” but does not explicitly classify them. Following the logic of the parenthetical statement, however, they too must “belong to the bourgeoisie.” The second change comes in Engels's delineation of four subgroups of “small peasants”—those “in serfdom,” persons “bound to their lords and masters”; feudal tenants; smallholders; and farm laborers. The category of serfs has been added to the three outlined nearly two decades earlier.

Little was said about the farm segments in that earlier account, it will be remembered, except that they can never proceed independently. They require the “initiatory impulse” of the “more enlightened” people of the towns. Here, with complete consistency, he details and recommends just such an impulse: it is the workers' major task. The paragraphs are remarkable in that they give such extended attention to the Agrarfrage (the farm question). The choices of those populations are treated here as key to the subsequent historical development.

Since the bourgeoisie has “failed to do its duty” by the “serfs,” that is, to free them from serfdom, it should not be difficult to convince them that “salvation” can come “only from the working class.” As for the feudal tenants, their situation, he reports, is “almost equal to that of the Irish.” With high rents and uncertain yields, they are left entirely at the mercy of the landlords; the bourgeoisie provides relief only under compulsion. Where, he asks, “should the tenants look for relief outside of the workers?” The third group of farmers, the smallholders, are also in desperate circumstances. Heavily indebted, they face the bourgeoisie directly; it is the “capitalist usurers” who “squeeze the lifeblood out of them.” “It will be necessary to make clear to these people,” Engels writes, “that only when a government of the people will have transformed all mortgages into a debt to the State, and thereby lowered the rent, will they be able to free themselves from the usurer. This, however, can be accomplished only by the working class.”³⁹ The promise or tradeoff in this case, rather unexpectedly, is that the working class will undertake, somehow, to rescue this segment of the petty bourgeoisie.

The “wage-workers of the land,” the agricultural proletariat, appear “wherever middle and large land ownership prevails.” In those areas, they “form the most numerous class.” It is here, Engels claims, that the urban workers “find their most numerous and natural allies.” Engels sees this group as pivotal for the subsequent historical development. His final sentences read:

The agricultural proletariat, the wage-workers of the land, is the class from which the bulk of the armies of the princes is being recruited. It is the class which, thanks to universal suffrage, sends into Parliament the great mass of feudal masters and Junkers. However, it is also the class nearest to the industrial workers of the city. It shares their conditions of living, and it is still deeper steeped in misery than the city workers. This class, powerless because split and scattered, but possessing a hidden power which is so well known to the government and nobility that they purposely allow the schools to deteriorate in order that the rural population should remain unenlightened, must be called to life and drawn into the movement. This is the most urgent task of the German labour movement. From the day when the mass of the workers of land have learned to understand their own interests, a reactionary, feudal, bureaucratic or bourgeois government in Germany becomes an impossibility.⁴⁰

This last recommendation is almost Tocquevillian in its call to educate likely allies to remove them from the opposing coalition and to bring them into the ranks of the progressive forces. An important breakthrough has occurred in this discussion: farm segments have been treated as significant political actors worthy of attention.

The formulation in this preface has serious implications for the larger Marxian theory. History, according to that theory, unfolds dialectically. The proletariat, it will be remembered, is formed in opposition to the bourgeoisie; its consciousness is formed in the process of struggle with the dominant class. Although, as noted, modern history opens with a complicated heritage of classes and institutions (all of that obscured by outmoded or misleading ideologies), a vast simplification results when the bourgeoisie comes to power and creates its “historically necessary” institutional arrangements. That simplification, in turn, facilitates the development of working-class consciousness as the implications of bourgeois rule become ever-more transparent, open, and obvious. That is the meaning of the frequently used term “unveiling.”

But what is one to make of this new argument? If things develop as Engels now claims, that entire line of argument would have to be either abandoned or seriously reworked. With power dispersed among a wide range of allies, the polar confrontation of opposites would not occur. The enemy could not be defined simply as the bourgeoisie, since all groups in the conservative coalition would be part of the problem. Given that sharing of power, one should expect compromise policies among those various segments; Engels says just that in his statement about sharing authority with allies as circumstances demand. One result would be disadvantage for bourgeois interests; it would mean the possibility, the likelihood even, of retained, reinstituted, or new fetters hampering the development of capitalist production and accumulation. And if the bourgeoisie does not develop as predicted, if it does not do the things anticipated, would the proletariat experience its predicted dialectical development?

With government policies reflecting a plurality of interests, the targets for working-class resentments would accordingly also become rather diverse. The social processes, in short, would be such as to complicate things, or to reverse the cliché, they would re-veil those events. One alternative for the workers, possibly, if suitably guided, would be to target the entire system. If no longer facing a clearly defined bourgeois opponent, the workers might focus on the entire reactionary-feudal-bureaucratic-monarchical-bourgeois government. But another problem arises with this revisionism. If the bourgeoisie can make deals with such a wide range of groups, if it no longer requires total control, what would stop it from making deals with the proletariat, in whole or in part? Why would it not, for example, provide various welfare programs, thus rewarding workers and generating thereby a sense of gratitude or loyalty? Engels's formulations here, his raising of the pluralist option, makes clear that choice is involved. He has thereby erased the supposed necessity of the Marx-Engels argument; a new voluntarism and, hence, a new element of contingency has made its appearance.

Engels's final point is also of considerable importance, although it is largely neglected in comment and assessment of the German case: he has introduced and emphasized the importance of the Agrarfrage . It is a question of extraordinary importance, the proletariat of any nation being formed, for the most part, of ex-farmers or children of farmers. How one addresses farmers, before their “fall” into the working class, might well determine their later responses. The simplest alternatives are that one could make friends of them or one could turn them into enemies. Engels, at this point, recognized the importance of the issue, but there was to be little subsequent follow-through. The German Social Democrats took up the issue and discussed it again in 1895. But the handling of the question was disastrous; the issue, in effect, was tabled. The next serious discussion of the Agrarfrage came in 1927, when it was too late to gain the favor of Germany's farmers.

THE ADDENDUM TO THE PREFACE

Apparently sensing some problem with his 1870 statement, Engels wrote a brief addendum in 1874 for the third edition of The Peasant War. Here one finds still another portrait of German class relations and the dynamics of their development. The Prussian victories of 1870 and the unification of 1871, by adding millions of non-Prussian Germans, have transformed things, displacing “the entire foundation of the Prussian State edifice.” The “Junker dominance,” one learns, had become ever-more intolerable, even for the government itself. This is the first time, it will be noted, that the Junkers are said to be dominant in the Prussian government. In Revolution and Counter-Revolution he states explicitly that they had been deprived of power. Now one learns that the monarchy was maintaining an equilibrium in the struggle between nobility and bourgeoisie. The monarchy, he declares, was “protecting the nobility against the onslaught of the bourgeoisie.” But then, sensing the more serious threat of proletarian revolution and the threat to all forms of property, the monarchy has taken the task of “protecting all propertied classes against the onslaught of the working-class.” The most convenient arrangement for this purpose was a “Bonapartist monarchy.” The Junker, he reports, is gradually losing his “feudal privileges.” Slowly, belatedly, he “is forcibly being transformed into something akin to the English squire,” essentially a bourgeois, market-oriented farmer, a businessman just like any other.

The character of the arrangement, the tacit agreement, is simple: The government “reforms the laws at a snail pace tempo in the interests of the bourgeoisie; it removes the impediments to industry”; and, on the other hand, the bourgeoisie “leaves in the hands of the government all actual political power. … The bourgeoisie buys its gradual social emancipation for the price of immediate renunciation of its own political power.” The bourgeoisie, in short, abandons its historical political mission. It is, as indicated, a major deviation from the main line of the Marx-Engels framework. Although the bourgeoisie proves “miserable” in the political realm, it does, nevertheless, perform its task in the economic realm. “As far as industry and commerce are concerned,” Engels declares, the bourgeoisie “fulfils its historic duty.” The class itself has developed, so that “at last we have world trade, a really big industry, and a really modern bourgeoisie.” And that means, simultaneously, “a truly mighty proletariat.” The remaining paragraphs of this brief article are focused on the workers, providing an encomium, a brief comparative study, and some words on the immediate practical tasks.⁴¹

German workers, it seems, came though the Franco-Prussian War with flying colors: “Not a trace of national chauvinism made itself manifest among them. … In no country have the workers stood such a difficult test with such splendid results.” The working-class parties came under considerable attack and, in the years immediately following, arrests, imprisonment, and general harassment were regular occurrences. Despite the onslaught, however, in the elections of January 1874, the party came through with a victory “unique in the history of the modern labor movement.”⁴²

Two principal reasons are given for this success, the first of these being that German workers “belong to the most theoretical people of Europe.” We are told they retain “that sense of theory which the so-called ‘educated' people of Germany have totally lost. Without German philosophy, particularly that of Hegel, German scientific Socialism (the only scientific Socialism extant) would never have come into existence. Without a sense for theory, scientific Socialism would have never become blood and tissue of the workers. What an enormous advantage this is, may be seen on the one hand from the indifference of the English labour movement towards all theory, which is one of the reasons why it moves so slowly.”⁴³ Workers in France and Belgium, by contrast, suffer from the “mischief and confusion” created by Proudhonism. Worse still, the Spanish and Italian workers suffer from Proudhonism in its “caricature form” presented by Bakunin.

This argument, one might note, appears burdened with more than a trace of national chauvinism. At the same time, it points to the role of those bourgeois intellectuals who break away from their own class and provide enlightenment for the otherwise untutored workers. That focus on “the most theoretical people of Europe,” that emphasis on a cultural factor, deviates from the strict materialist theory of history. It might be that there is some economic explanation for the theoretical character of the Germans, for the atheoretical character of the English, and for the mistaken-theoretical character of those Latin peoples. The argument, however, if there is one, is not spelled out. As it stands, it is purely cultural; the differences depend on the national tutors, whether Bakunin and Proudhon or Hegel, Marx, and Engels.

A second reason for the preeminent position of the German working class is the factor of sequence. This group arrives after the earlier English and French developments; it has developed “on the shoulders of” the English and French movements. Utilizing that prior experience, the German movement has been able to avoid others' mistakes. The end result is that the German workers now “form the vanguard of the proletarian struggle.” That 1874 conclusion, it will be noted, was foreseen earlier in the Manifesto passage cited in the opening chapter.

A discussion of the tasks facing the workers follows. The “specific duty of the leaders,” Engels states, is to “gain an ever clearer understanding of the theoretical problems, to free themselves more and more from the influence of traditional phrases inherited from the old conception of the world, and constantly to keep in mind that Socialism, having become a science, demands the same treatment as every other science—it must be studied.” A further task for those leaders is “to bring [that] understanding … to the working masses.” This part of the directive, borrowing a term from later discussion, is Leninist in character. Another task assigned those leaders is not at all Leninist: it is to undertake electoral activity. The task, Engels declares, is “to wrest from the enemy's hands one city, one electoral district after the other.” The farm question, so heavily emphasized in the 1870 introduction, here, curiously, receives only a single sentence: “Encouraging as may be the successes of the propaganda among the rural population, more remains to be done in this field.”⁴⁴

The explanation for the sudden, though temporary, interest in the Agrarfrage in 1870 may be found in the topical issues then under discussion in the European left. The International Workingmen's Association met in Basel in September 1869. Then under Marx's direction, the delegates had passed a resolution affirming the “right and duty” of society to collectivize privately owned farm properties. This posed a problem for the Social Democratic Workers' Party (SDAP) of Liebknecht and Bebel. If the resolution was accepted, it would mean a break with their left liberal, middle-class allies in the German People's Party. It would also, Liebknecht recognized, make it difficult for them to campaign among the small farmers. He at first opposed acceptance, but then, sensing the tide of opinion within the party, came out in favor of acceptance, even writing a pamphlet to justify the move. Expropriation of major landowners presented no problem; that was clearly in order. Liebknecht recognized the need for a positive approach to the small farmers. He argued that education should be used to persuade them “to renounce their property.” At the SDAP congress in June 1870, the resolution carried easily. The event was decisive for both party and nations. Liberals and the left, from then on, went separate paths. That the Agrarfrage was central for Engels in 1870 (“the most urgent task of the German labour movement”) but worth only a passing mention in 1874, suggests that the concern reflected immediate tactical needs rather than the more lasting requirements of a scientific theory.⁴⁵

CONCLUSIONS

Two sets of conclusions follow: the first deals with the classes, the second with larger issues, of method and theory.

The bourgeoisie, not too surprisingly, occupies a central position in all five analyses reviewed here. This class, meaning here the haute (or grande) bourgeoisie—big business, the owner of the major capitalist enterprises—receives serious discussion in all five accounts and is assigned some major role in all of them. A decisive shift of position appears with respect to the major aim or task of this class; that is the first of our conclusions. In the first three accounts, written at mid-century, the bourgeoisie aspires to take power; that is its major historic mission. The accounts of the 1870s, however, give another portrait, in which the German bourgeoisie abandons its task. It is then willing, anxious even, to share power with other groups through a series of trades or deals designed to save its skin. By 1874, it is portrayed as happy to leave power with the monarchy, that agency providing the vehicle for balancing the demands of the major property-holding classes of Germany.

This new portrait constitutes a significant deviation from what might be termed the main line of Marxist thought, which, as stated in the Manifesto, holds that the “executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.” In this new version, it becomes a committee for managing the common affairs of several classes. This might well be termed the first of the many subsequent revisionism efforts. The key elements of this new direction are the abandonment of the historical mission and the substitution of what might be called the pluralist settlement. These accounts, actually little more than brief preliminary sketches, provide two different portraits: in one, the bourgeoisie itself negotiates the plural settlement or the power sharing; in the other, the monarchy works out the arrangements. Marx, it should be noted, was alive and well at this point. Engels was living in London at this time, and the two met regularly for extended discussion of their many common concerns. We have no indication that Marx objected to these new formulations.

Although these works are intended to support the scientific socialist perspective, one key aspect of the bourgeoisie's behavior, its abandonment of the historical mission, is explained in terms of a character failing: it is due to cowardice. But if bravery-versus-cowardice is to be the decisive factor, history will lose its determinant character; it no longer follows a “necessary” pattern. The German bourgeoisie, so it is claimed, saw the implications of the workers' rising in Paris in June 1848 and accordingly decided to arrange its affairs differently, in effect, leaving government to someone else. That character failing, that cowardly behavior, however, appears as such only from the perspective—from the logic—of the Marx-Engels position. Members of the bourgeoisie, who were very much occupied with the management of their growing enterprises, appear to have been satisfied to leave government to others, as was the case in Britain. From their perspective, acceptance of the current arrangement may have been the logical, the best, or the most appropriate conclusion.

The second conclusion involves the proletariat, the most consistently portrayed of all the classes; it received serious attention in all five accounts. It is consistently said to be developing in numbers and in consciousness. Its aim is invariably given as revolutionary; its goal is to take power. No suggestion appears anywhere in these accounts of a reformist tendency within the working class; the argument of the later revisionism associated with Eduard Bernstein does not appear here. The portrait of the workers is clear, consistent, and unambiguous. This is the case even though its dialectical opposite, the bourgeoisie, does not perform as expected. The bourgeoisie's exercise of political power in its own interests would precipitate clashes with the workers and would unveil the entire process. Although a key cause is absent, Engels nevertheless affirms the consequence, the growth of working-class consciousness. A key task—reconsideration of the causal dynamics—has been avoided.

The Lumpenproletariat is the subject of the third conclusion: it receives very little attention, a trace in “The Status Quo,” a paragraph in the Manifesto, and one in the preface. It is ignored in the remaining two accounts. Where mentioned, the accounts are entirely consistent—this is a dangerous class. The reason for the spare treatment is easily established: the Lumpenproletariat plays no role whatsoever in Engels's discussion of the German developments. Its only role is, so to speak, offstage, in Paris during the June Days. That event provides merely a cautionary reminder, something for German workers and their leaders to keep in mind. The repeated mention of a class that plays no role is rather puzzling. The references to the Lumpenproletariat have an almost ritualistic character; it is part of the standard litany.

The petty bourgeoisie, the subject of the fourth conclusion, receives serious attention in four of the five accounts (it is missing entirely from the brief addendum). Within the context of modern society, the class is consistently portrayed as having “lost its place.” It has no proper function, no task that it performs well that could provide the basis for a satisfactory existence or for political power. With respect to predictions of effects, of consequences, however, the petty bourgeoisie is the most inconsistently portrayed of all the classes; an extraordinary range of options is announced. It is in alliance with the nobility and is in process of backing away from that alliance. It is portrayed as a class for itself, as one pursing distinctive reactionary goals. It is said to support whichever class provides rewards. It is said to fight against the bourgeoisie; it is said to submit itself to the bourgeoisie. It is said to be vacillating, to be opportunistic, identifying first with one side, then with another, depending on which seems to be the winner. Some factions are said to identify with workers in the developing struggle. The petty bourgeoisie is a wild card in Engels's deck. No serious evidence is offered to support any of these diverse claims; they are merely declared. Table 2 attempts to summarize this diversity.

Two possibilities, it will be noted, do not appear in this list. The easiest prediction of all, especially in the age of liberalism, would be that of individual responses. A myriad of rational, calculating individuals could develop scores of options yielding a diversity that would defy easy categorization. While easily conceived (and easily defended), this possibility does not appear in the Marx-Engels repertory. Their predictions involve sweeping categorical judgments; the class as a whole, or at best, a couple of “fractions” of the class, will react as collectivities. Given the categorical preference, it is remarkable that one such response is also among the neglected possibilities: some “fractions” might conceivably retain traditional ties or loyalties. One possibility, especially important in the German context, would be the religious factor. But religion, where mentioned, is viewed as a derived phenomenon and as one destined to lose significance. In the final analysis, it is treated as having no importance.

TABLE 2. PREDICTIONS MADE ABOUT THE PETTY BOURGEOISIE

Work	Predictions
“Status Quo”	1. Stage One: The richer urban segment joins with the revolutionary bourgeoisie; the poorer rural segment joins with the nobles.
	2. Stage Two: The poorer segment joins with the bourgeoisie.
	3. Stage Three: Unconditional surrender; puts itself under command of the bourgeoisie; a few concessions and it is conservative.
Manifesto	4. All fractions fight against the bourgeoisie to save their middle-class existence; they are reactionary (i.e., a class for itself).
	5. Some, by chance, adopt the standpoint of the proletariat.
Revolution and Counter-Revolution	6. Extreme vacillation; shifting alliances, none of them clear parallels to foregoing claims.
Preface	7. Extreme vacillation; allies itself with winners.
	8. Some good elements follow worker. (One line—same as no. 5 above.)
Addendum	No mention

In one respect, these portraits of the petty bourgeoisie display a remarkable consistency: in all of them the petty bourgeoisie is shown in extremely negative, unflattering, derogatory terms. The class is consistently denigrated or, to use the language of our age, it is consistently put down. The petty bourgeoisie, in this extension of the basic litany, is capable of no good; worthwhile, elevated, idealistic, or decent actions are not to be expected from this segment of society.

The fifth conclusion involves the farmers. This collection of “fractions” is described as a class in three of the five analyses. In one account, in the Manifesto, “the peasant” is included in a list of petty bourgeois occupations. The portrayals, in general, closely parallel those of the petty bourgeoisie. The farm populations are not quite so insistently denigrated as the petty bourgeoisie, although the principal tendency is clearly negative as, for example, in the Manifesto remark about the “idiocy of rural life.” The consistent emphasis here is on their incapacity. Because of their territorial dispersal, they cannot initiate or carry through any serious historical movement. This claim is puzzling because, as was noted, it is clearly contrary to fact for the German states in 1848. The claim can be supported only by withholding evidence of widespread rural insurgency. The comments about the farm populations generally focus on the passivity of the farmers; they also point to the long-term historical tendency, to their impending “fall” into the proletariat. Only in the 1870 preface is there discussion of the needs of farmers and the kinds of appeals that socialists should make in order to gain their support. At that point, a strong “voluntarist” emphasis appears, stimulated, presumably, by the issues then under discussion in left circles. When no longer a current theme, the farmers were again treated with characteristic indifference.

Only one of the five texts reveals a simple fact—that the farm population was the largest single segment of German society. Those persons employed in farming and forestry made up more than half, actually 55 percent, of the employed population of Germany in 1852.⁴⁶ In 1871, when Engels was writing his later contributions, those groups had declined somewhat, to 49 percent of the total. The absolute number of persons so employed increased in that period. The numbers continued to increase up to World War I, although, to be sure, the relative decline continued.

We have no precise comparable measure of the size of the urban proletariat. Those employed in industry and handwork taken together with those in mining formed 25 percent in 1852 and only 29 percent in 1872. That category, however, includes artisans (part of the petty bourgeoisie) as well as managers, professionals, and clerical workers in industry. Some workers, to be sure, would be found elsewhere (e.g., in transport, in banks, in insurance firms, and linked to the military). It seems unlikely, were one able to reassemble the categories, that the proletariat would have formed as much as one-third of the labor force even in the early seventies.

A sixth conclusion involves what might be termed the missing agency. The reference is to the regimes, to the monarchs heading the states, and to the bureaucracy, the civil service, and the military—the principal instrumentalities of those regimes. The writings of Marx and Engels display a general reluctance to focus on governments and their personnel. One might hazard the guess that “the bureaucracy” in those decades would be as important quantitatively as either the nobility or the bourgeoisie. In terms of political importance—the ability to make things happen (or to prevent their happening)—monarchs and their bureaucracies would be more important than those minuscule classes. The importance of the regimes is indicated by Engels himself, who describes both nobility and bourgeoisie as not in power. Although the regimes are not part of his central framework, Engels does find it necessary, in later discussion, to fill in, to provide his readers with an ad hoc sketch. The regimes, therefore, as indicated, have a phantom existence in these works. The ad hoc treatment is all the more remarkable since the regime (along with an assortment of allies) is the antagonist in the struggles being described. The alliance of “rising” and disaffected classes (or factions thereof) is after all contending with a government—not with a ruling class such as, for example, the aristocracy.

A regime, especially a monarchical one, does not fit into the basic analysis, with the claim of class struggle as the constant in all hitherto existing societies. Kings and other monarchs, dukes, electors, barons, and so on, are not classes. To focus on them means, unavoidably, to focus on the role of individuals—on their whims, fancies, and idiosyncrasies. One cannot avoid that reality. To do so, it would be necessary, for example, to assert that it made no difference to Prussia whether the monarch was Frederick II (called the Great) or Frederick William II (his successor, the king during the first years of the French Revolution). It would, in short, be necessary to reduce the significance of these individuals to zero. In practice, however, Engels does not do that. He brings in discussion of individuals when needed, of Frederick William IV, for example, and provides long descriptive passages about their importance. Engels is obviously having it both ways. He announces his “new” historiographic rules in the first paragraphs of Revolution and Counter-Revolution : The “causes … are not to be sought for in the accidental efforts, talents, faults, errors, or treacheries of some of the leaders.” But later, as if he were a student of Leopold von Ranke, he portrays the king's foibles at length and attributes to them a decisive role in generating the subsequent events.⁴⁷

The treatment of the bureaucracy is equivocal. In “The Status Quo,” it is referred to as a class. But it does not easily fit with the basic Marxian portraiture of exploiting and exploited classes. This segment is “something else,” not easily placed in terms of its “relationship to the means of production.” The few comments or observations made about this class are again ad hoc in character. The basic procedure is to suggest its derivation from other classes, as if the policy preferences found in the bureaucracy would reflect those origins elsewhere. But then, here and there, one finds an important alternative, that the bureaucracy might have a direction or an interest of its own.⁴⁸ It could also, on occasion, move against the interests of those other classes. The bureaucracy, in several contexts, is portrayed as moving against the interests of the aristocracy, even though it is staffed, especially in the leading positions, by persons of aristocratic origin. There is ample historical justification for this claim and, one might add, a good explanation for it. The requirements of one's current position might easily override the training and influences associated with a person's origin. One might well develop new loyalties, especially where all major rewards (e.g., money, prestige, advancement) depend on performance in the bureaucracy.⁴⁹ The choice of liberal over aristocratic values was aided by some of the lessons of Adam Smith and the classical economists taught in the universities. The universities, it should be noted, were (and still are) part of the larger category, that is, of the bureaucracy.

Like the previously discussed division of the bourgeoisie into two subcategories, big and little, most discussions of the bureaucracy prove to be remarkably crude. Governments in continental Europe in the nineteenth century typically contained a foreign ministry, a finance ministry, a police agency, a justice ministry, a cultural ministry (attending to religion and education), and, last but not least, a war ministry. Many complexities were involved, such as differences in background, in subsequent training, and in loyalties and interest, complexities not in any way captured by a simple reference to the bureaucracy. Any serious intellectual contribution must recognize that underlying complexity and must, at minimum, consider some detailed hypotheses. The minimum requirement, as in the present case, is to signal doubt as to the adequacy of the crude, all-encompassing formula. With no serious analysis of the monarchy or of the bureaucracy, it follows that the relationship between the two will also be neglected.

We have a simple possibility: strong monarchs dominate their bureaucracies, making them instruments of their policies; weak, indifferent, ineffectual, or lackadaisical monarchs show little interest in ruling and hence allow their bureaucracies considerable autonomy. Frederick the Great, as long as his health allowed, dominated his bureaucracy. His successors, three indifferent Frederick Williams, in one way or another allowed their bureaucracies considerable latitude. It would be a mistake to read the result as bureaucratic determinism. The key consideration was the orientation or zeal of the monarch. At a later point, when William II, the last kaiser, chose to conduct his own foreign policy, he did so, regularly overriding his foreign ministry in the process.⁵⁰

The seventh conclusion addresses the question of Marx and Engels's method. The five works in question show an extraordinary flexibility in their treatment of the classes. Borrowing a musical image, these works, produced over a quarter of a century, appear to be extemporizations, creations of the moment designed to explain events as they had unfolded to that point. It would be a mistake, remaining with the musical image, to see them as free inventions; they are obviously constrained, bound by some rules that limited their development. It would be more appropriate, therefore, to see them as variations on a theme. The basic theme, of course, is that of class. The classes under discussion show a relative constancy over the period from 1847 to 1874 (see Table 3). A wider range of variation appears, as indicated in the previous conclusions, in the specific treatments, that is, in the claims made about the consciousness, the quantitative and qualitative development, the outlooks, and the internal cohesion of the various classes.

One might argue that this flexibility represents growth or development, in which case the diversity might be seen as the normal or expected occurrence in a scientific enterprise. But that is not the case. Growth refers to something added, something stemming from a previous state or condition. The new shoot grows out of the branch which, in turn, grows out of the trunk of the tree. But the new variations in this case do not have that kind of organic connection to the previous exposition; they constitute new starts not suggested or in any way foreshadowed in the previous work. No new insight is provided into the logic of the previous argument such as would mandate a change of position. Nor is new evidence presented (for example, on the motivations or outlooks of the lower middle class) such as would force modification of a previous claim. The appropriate terms then are consistency and inconsistency, not growth and development. The procedure is declamation, not discovery. No attempt at reconciliation of the different versions is made. There is no recognition of the error of the previous claims nor, of course, are reasons given for the shifts of position. In short, positions are abandoned, and new ones are simply declared.

TABLE 3. CLASS/AGENCY DISCUSSED

Class/agency	“Status Quo” (1847)	Manifesto (1848)	Revolution (1851)	Preface (1870)	Addendum (1874)
Nobility	X	T	X	X	X
Industrial landowners	T
Farmers	X	T2	X	X
Monarchy and/or bureaucracy	X		X	X	X
Bourgeoisie	X	X	X	X	X
Petty bourgeoisie	X	X	X	X
Proletariat	X	X	X	X	X
Lumpenproletariat	T	X		X
Number of discussions	6	4	6	7	4

1 An “X” signifies an important discussion, in most instances one of at least paragraph length. A “T” (for Trace) signifies a passing reference, usually a sentence or two. The total given in the bottom line is for Xs only. This table, it should be noted, does not include the radical intellectuals or the military.

2 The farmers here are counted with the petty bourgeoisie.

The conclusion may be stated analytically, that is, without the metaphor, as follows. The Manifesto, supposedly, states the general Marx-Engels position. It provides the basic outline of the larger framework. That outline cannot deal with the multiplicity of events occurring within a given nation in any episode of its current development. To account for such episodes, some additional study and analysis are required. If the general framework is adequate, appropriate, or correct, it should provide the guidelines for those detailed analyses. The proof of the integrity of the intellectual system would appear in the links made between the general position and the specific historical analyses. If one is in fact dealing with a consistent framework, then the principal conclusions of the general scheme should appear, clearly supported, in the specific studies. The latter will unquestionably contain many supplemental lines of analysis and additional conclusions, but fundamental to the claim of unity would be the clear, unambiguous, integral role of the key general propositions.

Another proof of the integrity of the system would appear in the links between the specific analyses. The conclusions drawn at Time should have a logical connection with those drawn at a previous Time. The subsequent conclusions should, ideally, indicate confirmation of the previous findings (showing either the identical pattern or a continuation of previously established trends). If, however, the conclusions shifted dramatically from one point to the next, those results would not demonstrate the logic, the power, or the usefulness of a consistent theoretical system. Error, to be sure, is always a possibility. A correction, an explanation of the earlier mistakes (for example, a mistaken derivation from the general scheme or an inadequate understanding of relevant fact), would attest to the usefulness of the original system. But the pattern found here, the succession of declarations and abandonments, points to an opposite direction. What one has is a nonsystematic procedure, a series of ad hoc extemporizations.

Another approach to the same problem involves the short-run versus the long-run distinction. The Manifesto, it is said, focuses on the entire capitalist epoch, that is, on the long-run development. The specific historical analyses deal with the short-run occurrences. The discussions of the short run will (of course) cover different terrain and have different specific contents. But this distinction does not avoid the objection contained in the above paragraph. The key propositions of the general analysis should still, somehow or other, be visible within the framework of the short-term analyses. The long term, after all, is the sum of a collection of short terms. If the long-term predictions are accurate, their reality (their coming-into-being) should be manifest in the short-term accounts. But in these instances, where Engels has contingency, personal interventions, royal willfulness, mentality factors, diverse options, and unforeseen coalitions, it is difficult to see how indeterminant short-run episodes will add up to a determinant long run. The opposite conclusion is more clearly appropriate: the short-run analyses undermine the claims of the long-term analysis.⁵¹

An eighth conclusion also involves method: the works make persistent use of attitudinal arguments. People in the same objective circumstances behave differently, the diversity being explained, again in an offhand way, with declarations of different outlooks or orientations. The nobility and the industrial landowners, for example, do the same thing—they have the same relationships to some means of production—but with sharply different outcomes. The difference is due to an attitude or outlook. On one dimension it is a matter of easygoing versus hard-driving work habits; on another it involves the choice of traditional versus modern farm technology. The result is a difference in rates of return—3 percent versus 15 percent—and, accordingly, changes in the relative positions of the two classes over the long term. The explanation is cultural (and, perhaps, social psychological) as opposed to the purely economic.

While from one perspective commendable (it demonstrates an openness to alternative lines of explanation), reference to such cultural arguments should appear as more than casual asides. The explanation should be stated explicitly and the implications explored. One should explore the sources of those cultural orientations (as Max Weber tried to do in his famous work on the Protestant ethic). One should also consider possible consequences. Economic structures, generally speaking, are givens; they are unalterable facts. Culture does not have that same fixed character. It is one of those things that can be changed. At its simplest, the wide-awake aristocrat could see his opportunity and could respond accordingly. He too could make use of the most advanced farm technology; he could also, of course, change his work habits. Bourgeois practice unveils possibilities for him also. Recognizing the substantial differences in rates of return, moreover, he would have considerable economic incentive to make those changes. The implication, of course, is that claims about outlooks make for much greater complexity; they allow for greater diversity in the range of possible historical development. History is no longer so narrowly determined as in the basic version of Marx and Engels's theory. New options for development—and for alliance—make their appearance, and again one is traveling on the road to conditional, contingent explanation.

Rather than follow their road consistently, in this respect, Marx and Engels operate on two levels, as with their treatment of the phantom agency. There is the basic theory, and then there is the ancillary theory, the latter appearing only in casual, offhand references. Although treated as not entirely presentable, the ancillary theory is a necessary adjunct to the basic position. It contains the range of additional or supplementary explanations that make the basic theory viable. That being the case, there is no excuse for not bringing the ancillary arguments up front, and incorporating them into the basic package. But were one to do that, the basic line of argument would itself be transformed. It would lose its distinctive character, no longer standing in sharp opposition to conventional or bourgeois analysis. It would no longer provide the unique, distinctive weapon for assault on the status quo. The world would once again become complicated, difficult to comprehend, and, more seriously, difficult to predict. None of the predictions, moreover, once encumbered by the contingencies of attitudinal outlooks, would have the same initial or surface plausibility they had in the basic version of the theory.

The ninth conclusion involves another of the submerged components of the Marx-Engels position. The invocation of attitudes, as noted, indicates a voluntarist component in the theory. That voluntarism, the role of will, of choice, of personal options, appears frequently in these works. The previous conclusion focused on presumed existent outlooks or preferences. But in other contexts Engels focuses on might have beens, on choices that, for one reason or another, were neglected. The most important of these appears in his discussion of the bourgeoisie, where its political task, taking power, was abandoned. The reason given, it will be remembered, was failure of nerve or, more precisely, cowardice.

That focus on character failure avoids the question of what Engels thinks they should have done. The negative judgment is clear—they did the wrong thing; the positive option is not spelled out clearly. Engels argues that the bourgeoisie could not have gone it alone in 1848; they needed allies. But there is no discussion of what they should have done to secure the support of those allies; he is, therewith, again withholding something. Either the argument is cryptopluralist or it is crypto-something else.

If one assumes the former, it is necessary to consider the options: What could be negotiated? But here it is clear that the bourgeoisie had little choice. At that point, inspired by laissez-faire doctrines, they were not about to create even a primitive welfare state so as to relieve working-class grievances. They were not about to offer debt forgiveness so as to gain the support of small farmers. Devoted to the inviolability of private property, they would not favor expropriation of large landholders so as to allow redistribution. They were not likely to respond to artisan demands by, say, reinstituting guild privileges, since they wanted to see free entry to all trades. It is not clear what they could have offered the rest of the petty bourgeoisie to protect them from the competition they themselves, the haute bourgeoisie, provided. The bourgeoisie, in brief, had virtually no negotiating options, at least none that they would have seen as acceptable. The pluralist option, tradeoffs for support, was not open to them.

That leaves the crypto-something else. What was it that Engels had in mind when he called for decisive action from the bourgeois leaders? The answer, no mystery surely, is that they should have taken over the instruments of the state, specifically the bureaucracy and the army. The lesson, put simply, was this: If they could not achieve their goals by negotiation, they should have imposed them by force. It is, in short, an early, though rather indirect, lesson in Leninism.⁵²

Many find the logic of Marx and Engels's system compelling. They emphasize the consistency and durability of the framework. They claim brilliance, profundity, and penetrating insight on the part of the authors. In contrast, this review has found casual, easygoing procedure to be typical; there is infirm logic, many less-than-profound declarations, and a remarkable array of inconsistencies.

Notes

1. For general overviews, see Pinson, Modern Germany, chaps. 3-11; Holborn, Modern Germany, vols. 2, 3; Hamerow, Restoration; and Sheehan, German History. For references on the history leading up to 1848, see n. 28 below. For events leading up to the unification, see Hamerow, Social Foundations, both volumes. For events leading up to the unification and for subsequent decades, see Craig, Germany.

2. Quoted in Henderson, Friedrich Engels, 1:98. See also, Kluchert, Geschichtsschreibung, pp. 126-41. Kluchert's book covers some of the works under review here. He focuses on a different problem, that is, on the varying treatment of the link between the economic and the social-political factors in Marx and Engels's works of the period.

   Engels had written earlier articles on Germany. A three-part series entitled “The State of Germany” reviewed events from 1815 to 1840 and appeared in the Northern Star, October 25 and November 8, 1845, and April 4, 1846 (MECW, 6:15-33). An article written at about the same time as the “Status Quo,” one entitled “The Prussian Constitution,” appeared in the same journal, March 6, 1847 (MECW, 6:64-71). In January 1848, he published an article entitled “The Beginning of the End in Austria” (MECW, 6:530-36). There were also a couple of one-page contributions.

3. MECW, 6:76, 78, MEW, 4:42, 43. In the Collected Works the article is entitled “The Constitutional Question in Germany.” An English-language version of this work appears in Henderson, Friedrich Engels, 1:337-55. At some points Henderson translates Engels's term “bourgeoisie” as “middle class,” elsewhere with the construction “fully fledged bourgeoisie.” Where Engels refers to the bureaucracy as a “third class,” Henderson translates with the phrase a “third social group.”

4. MECW, 6:78-79, MEW, 4:44. That coalition of nobles and petty bourgeoisie is mentioned throughout the text. At one point (MECW, 6:87-88, MEW, 4:53), Engels says, “The bureaucracy was set up to govern petty bourgeoisie and peasants.” They have such diverse and conflicting interests that they “must be kept in leading strings.” Otherwise, he says, they would ruin themselves “with hundreds and thousands of lawsuits.” This “necessity” for the petty bourgeoisie becomes an unacceptable fetter for the bourgeoisie. Engels refers to the petty bourgeoisie “subjecting itself” (sich unterwerfen) to the bureaucracy. The petty bourgeois involvement in lower-level civil service positions, in short, does not mean their direction or domination of the administration. The bureaucracy “serves their interest” by providing “order” in what otherwise would be a very chaotic arrangement.

5. MECW, 6:79-80, MEW, 4:44-45. The petty bourgeoisie in this account differs strikingly from that described shortly thereafter in the Manifesto. No reactionary tendency is indicated here; there is no concern to “roll back the wheel of history.” Nor is there a chance progressive option. Here process and result are simply stated: the class is bought off; a few concessions and it is conservative.

6. MECW, 6:80-81, MEW, 4:45-46.

7. Henderson's summary statement on the 1818 tariff is from his German Industrial Power, p. 33. The quotations in the subsequent paragraph are from pp. 30-43. For more detail, see Henderson, Zollverein, and Hahn, Geschichte . For an investigation of the situation of Rheinland businessmen of the period, see Diefendorf, Businessmen and Politics . His account of bourgeois orientations differs substantially from Engels's portrait. For the tariff history, see pp. 313-26.

   A liberal program, Marx and Engels would have us believe, would be favored by business, by the rising bourgeoisie, and would be opposed by the aristocracy (those fetters being there, presumably, for their economic benefit). That expectation also does not appear to be accurate. The abolition of the internal obstacles combined with the barrier against outside foodstuffs should have been attractive to any capable commercial farmer, a category that would include most of the aristocracy. Henderson reports that the German experience at this point was opposite to that of Britain, “the owners of the great estates east of the Elbe were free-traders” while some of the industrialists sought greater protection (German Industrial Power, p. 41). For further revisionist conclusions about the Zollverein history, see Sheehan, German History, pp. 434, 501-4.

8. MECW, 6:81, MEW, 4:46-47. Henderson (“The Status Quo in Germany, 1847,” in Friedrich Engels, 1:344) renders this last passage as “the five percent profit of the bourgeoisie.”

9. MECW, 6:81-82, MEW, 4:47. In this instance, it will be noted, Engels has classified a segment of the farm population as bourgeois. The key passage reads: “The few landed gentry wise enough not to ruin themselves formed with the newly-emerging bourgeois landowners a new class of industrial landowners .” It is a rare usage, one that does not recur in the other works considered here (see the summary in Table 3 below). The diverse usages were discussed earlier, see Chapter 2, n. 57. In chapter 3, it will be remembered, Marx classified the “big landed proprietors,” the Bourbon Legitimists (categories that would have included most of the French aristocracy), as bourgeois.

   This text had little impact since, as indicated; it was not published in Engels's lifetime. In first appeared in Russian in 1929 and then in German in 1932. It first appeared in English in 1976 when two versions were published, the MECW and Henderson. The key passage appears to provide a textual basis for the subsequent gentry controversy (reviewed in Chapter 2 above). But the German original is Landjunker. In both Cassell's and the Wildhagen dictionaries, that term is translated as “country squire” rather than “gentry.”

10. MECW, 6:82-83, MEW, 4:47-48. It is impossible to get all of Engels's nuance into the present text. His portrait of the petty bourgeoisie is filled with deprecating comment. A steady sharp contrast is drawn between bourgeois capacity and the hopeless incompetence of the petty bourgeois. More of the same appears later in MECW, pp. 88-90, MEW, pp. 54-56.

11. MECW, 6:83, MEW, 4:48-49.

12. Mass opinion, in later decades, is directly expressed in elections, plebiscites, and referenda, although, to be sure, the meaning of the result is often far from clear. In still later decades, mass opinion could be gauged also through polls and surveys. It is curious that many commentators readily accept free and easy conclusions such as those put forward by Engels and yet bring such heavy suspicion and criticism to bear when faced with conclusions based on polls and surveys. There is the perplexing—and unexplored—problem of epistemology there. Why do self-declared critical commentators so easily accept an obviously doubtful procedure and so systematically reject patently superior alternatives?

13. MECW, 6:84, MEW, 4:49-50.

14. MECW, 6:86, MEW, 4:51.

15. On the high levels of bourgeois consciousness, see MECW, 6:88. The argument of necessity appears on pp. 81, 88, 90. The discussion of fetters is found on pp. 87-91. The equivalent pages in the MEW are 53-54, 46, 54, 56, 52-57.

16. In the Manifesto, with its focus on “the final struggle,” the bourgeoisie and proletariat, the major contenders, are treated as conscious cohesive entities. The petty bourgeoisie has no realistic position. Although showing some internal division (some of its members going over to the workers), that split is said to stem from personal awareness or idealism; it is not the result of quid pro quo negotiations.

    For a review of later Marxist discussions in which the original class formulations shift to coalitional analysis (i.e., cryptopluralism), see Van den Berg, Immanent Utopia, esp. pp. 301-2, 364, 484, 486, 489.

17. Just as surprising is Engels's statement that “the petty bourgeois seldom goes bankrupt” (MECW, 6:89, MEW, 4:55).

18. Krieger, German Revolutions, p. xliii. Krieger's claim about the precedence of Engels's work over other contenders is a questionable one. That might be the case with respect to popular impact, but few serious historians would judge it as superior to the three-volume work of the contemporary Adolf Wolff or to the later two-volume history by Veit Valentin (cited below in n. 28).

    In his introduction to a German-language edition, Richard Sperl declares the work to be not only of historical interest but also “for the solution to contemporary problems [it] possesses incalculable value.” Sperl quotes from Engels's introduction to the third German edition of Marx's Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte: “This eminent understanding of the living history of the day, this clear-sighted appreciation of events at the moment of happening, is indeed without parallel.” That statement, Sperl declares, applies equally to Engels's work. See Engels, Revolution und Konterrevolution, p. 5. See also Kluchert, Geschichtsschreibung, pp. 311-34.

19. Engels, Germany, pp. 125-26. In a previous article, describing “German conditions” between 1815 and 1830, Engels made the same point: “The aristocracy wanted to rule, however was too weak” (MEW, 2:581, Deutsche Zustände, III, original from the Northern Star, February 20, 1846).

    Engels's focus on feudalism in Germany in the 1840s might at first seem puzzling. The term “feudal” appears with great frequency here and in the other works under review. No definition is provided, but for most commentators, that would mean a system based on a bound farm population, on serfdom, on a legal obligation tying peasants to land owned by the nobility. The latter, in turn, were obligated to defend the peasants against foreign invasion and to provide for them in time of need. The administration of local affairs—public business and justice—was generally in the hands of the nobles.

    Bondage was abolished in the German states in the first decades of the nineteenth century, in response to the French revolutionary and Napoleonic threats. Serfdom was abolished in Schleswig-Holstein in 1804. Baron vom Stein's famous edict of October 9, 1807, ended “hereditary servitude and declared land a free commodity regardless of class” for all of Prussia. Other states quickly followed. With this emancipation, the Bauernbefreiung, feudalism was ended—de jure.

    Those edicts terminated the mutual obligation of the feudal contract. For some of those freed, the immediate result was an eviction notice; they no longer had any right to the land. For others, the large majority, the obligation of service was transformed into the obligation of rent for use of the nobleman's property. Arrangements were made by the state for eventual purchase of land, the amount varying, “as a rule from twenty to twenty-five times their annual value.” Local administration in some areas, particularly east of the Elbe, remained a noble privilege. As a result, the social relationships associated with feudalism persisted for decades after the emancipation. For a brief review, see Hamerow, Restoration, chap. 3. The quotations are his, from p. 45. See also Berdahl, “Conservative Politics.”

20. Engels, Germany, pp. 126-27. Engels, it will be noted, is again treating the tariff question as a zero-sum game—the bourgeoisie wins, others (specifically, the regime) lose. It is possible, of course, a key argument of economic liberalism, that there would be many winners. But that possibility—that reality, as indicated above—does not accord with Engels's “dialectical” portraiture.

21. Ibid., pp. 128-29. The Manifesto, as noted, defined petty bourgeoisie (or lower middle class) by example, that is, with illustrative lists of occupations. Engels's opening sentence here must be seen as an abbreviated list—that is, “the small trading and shopkeeping class.” Later in the paragraph, he adds the artisans, specifically, “the tailors, the shoemakers, the joiners.” “The peasants,” contained in both Manifesto listings of the petty bourgeoisie, are here classified separately with the farmers.

22. Ibid., pp. 129-30, 142-43. Two leading investigations of worker demands in 1848 are those of Hamerow, Restoration, chap. 8, and Noyes, Organization, chaps. 7, 8. Both indicate the backward-looking character of worker demands, especially those of journeyman. This same orientation, it will be remembered, appeared in the French context (see Chapter 3, n. 81 above).

23. Engels, Germany, pp. 130-31. For a brief review of the extensive agrarian violence, see Hamerow, Restoration, pp. 107-11. He describes the insurrection in the countryside as “the most serious rural uprising in Germany since the days of the Reformation. … The suppressed resentment of generations unloosed a wave of looting and burning” (p. 107). See also Jordan, Entstehung, pp. 117-29.

24. Engels, Germany, pp. 131, 133, 137.

25. Ibid., pp. 143, 148.

26. The opening paragraphs of that text contribute to the misreading. The second sentence, elaborating on the well-known opening statement, lists a series of categorical polar opposites: “Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed.” The following paragraph does recognize some complication, with its reference to “a manifold gradation of social rank” in the earlier epochs. It does not, however, say anything about coalitions as the key formations in that previous “history of class struggles.”

    The phrase “in a word” in the above passage, it will be noted, is followed by three words. That phrase is an inappropriate translation of the word Kurz (short) of the original text (MEW, 4:462).

27. Diefendorf, Businessmen and Politics, pp. 340, 341, 351, 352-53. The argument of the monarchy as the agent of economic progress, as the enthusiastic supporter of economic liberalism, is an old one. Similarly, the argument of cooperation, of agreement between monarchy and bourgeoisie, is also one long since established in the historical literature. For a comprehensive review, see Kocka, “Preussischer Staat.” East German historians, Kocka notes, are reluctant to concede these points. They focus on instances of conflict, thus allowing support for their claims of opposed interests, of the supposedly reluctant concessions. Much of that work focuses on the 1840s, admittedly a period of reaction, thus neglecting the more progressive experience of the twenties and thirties.

    The haute bourgeoisie did not change course during the revolution, suddenly fearing a mass uprising but, from the beginning, was antirevolutionary. That conclusion has long since been established in biographical studies of the leading bourgeois figures. For a useful review, see Dorpalen, “Die Revolution,” esp. pp. 333-35, and his German History, pp. 192-218.

28. Engels, Germany, p. 157. For accounts of the struggle in Berlin, see Langer, Political and Social Upheaval, pp. 387-400, and Robertson, Revolutions of 1848, pp. 115-31. Two leading sources are Valentin, Geschichte, vol. 1, chap. 6, and Wolff, Revolutions-Chronik, vol. 1, containing a detailed day-by-day account of the March events.

29. Engels, Germany, p. 185. Engels has it that the military was emboldened by the defeat of the workers in Paris during the June Days. That too is a claim requiring confirmation.

30. Ibid., pp. 163, 124. His treatment of the representatives to the Frankfurt Assembly is the same; they too are attacked for cowardice, for pusillanimity.

31. Diefendorf, Businessmen and Politics, pp. 353-54. It would be easy to pass off Engels's performance as an individual foible, as the reaction of one disappointed commentator. But, remarkably enough, the notion of the failed revolution, the belief that the bourgeoisie had not done its task properly, came to be the central line of analysis for discussion of modern Germany. It is a viewpoint (discussed earlier in Chapter 2) that is shared by Marxists and liberals. For a review, citations, and critique, see the essay by Eley, “The British Model,” sections 1 and 2, esp. pp. 40-43, 66-67.

32. Engels, Germany, pp. 167-68 and 124.

33. Again I have quoted from the Krieger edition (see n. 18 above). He has used the English translation by Moissaye J. Olgin done for the International Publishers in 1926. Two translation errors, one minor, one major, appear in this version. The German bourgeoisie is said to have developed a “remarkable trait” (p. 5). In the original it is a “remarkable cowardice” (merkwürdige Feigheit), MEW, 16:395. In 1866, one is told that “Austria, retaining all its provinces, subjugated, directly and indirectly, the entire north of Prussia” (p. 5). The original has it, correctly, that “Prussia, directly or indirectly, subjugated the entire north” (p. 395). All passages cited in the present text have been checked against the MEW version.

34. Engels, “Preface,” pp. 4-5. I have changed Olgin's “inefficient” to “incapable,” that seeming a better translation of unfähig.

    It will be noted that Engels is again making moral rather than analytical judgments—honor, blame, and in the next paragraph, cowardice. All of those judgments, moreover, are relative to his standard, to his concept of what the bourgeoisie ought to have done. All of this systematically excludes the obvious alternative—that Engels's original expectation might have been mistaken.

35. Ibid., pp. 5-7. “The main evil” appears as die Hauptschikane in the German original, that is, “the main chicanery.”

36. Ibid., p. 7. Engels's statement here is directly opposite to Marx's conclusion in the Eighteenth Brumaire. Marx has it that Louis Bonaparte and the army simply took power from the bourgeoisie; that class did not transfer it to the usurper, as if for safekeeping. Marx summarized matters simply; the coup of December 2, 1851, meant “end of the parliamentary regime and of bourgeois rule. Victory of Bonaparte” (MECW, 11:181, MEW, 8:193).

    Engels's dating of bourgeois rule in France—from 1849—is curious. If more than a careless error, it would mean that the bourgeoisie ruled only after Cavaignac, after the accession of Louis Bonaparte as president. If intended, Engels's reading would differ significantly from Marx's account of February 1848. The MEW editors make no comment on the matter.

37. Engels, “Preface,” pp. 7-8.

38. Ibid., pp. 8-9.

39. Ibid., pp. 9-10.

40. Ibid., p. 11 (emphasis added).

41. Ibid., pp. 12-15. The “Junker dominance” of this translation derives from an even stronger original, Junkerherrschaft—that is, Junker rule. For an understanding of “Bonapartist monarchy,” Engels refers readers to his 1872 publication, “The Housing Question.” The basic condition of modern Bonapartism, he reports there, is “an equilibrium between the bourgeoisie and proletariat.” In monarchies, whether of the old absolutist or modern Bonapartist variety, “the real governmental authority lies in the hands of a special caste of army officers and state officials” (MECW, 23:363, MEW, 18:258).

42. Engels, “Addendum,” p. 15. Engels's claim about the lack of chauvinism among German workers is flagrantly contrary to fact. Bebel and Liebknecht abstained on the war credit vote and came under heavy attack from Lassalleans and from within their own party. See Armstrong, “Social Democrats”; Maehl, August Bebel, pp. 73-77; and Dominick, Wilhelm Liebknecht, pp. 188-99. Some of that opposition came from Marx and Engels; see Engels's summary letter to Marx, August 15, 1870, MEW, 33:39-41, and Marx's letter, August 17, 1870, MEW, 33:43-44. For an example of “national chauvinism,” we have Engels's enthusiastic comment about “our soldiers,” the “splendid fellows” who, against machine guns and breech-loaders, had taken an entrenched French position with bayonets (letter to Marx, August 5, 1870, MEW, 33:30).

43. Engels, “Addendum,” pp. 16-17.

44. Ibid., p. 18. The Olgin translation reads, to wrest “one seat after another.” Correction has been made, following the MEW version (18:517) to read “one city,” etc.

45. See Morgan, German Social Democrats, pp. 192-99, and Dominick, Wilhelm Liebknecht, pp. 163-71, the quotation is from p. 170. For further discussion, see Hammen, “Agrarian Question”; Hertz-Eichenrode, “Karl Marx”; and Maehl, “Agrarian Policy.”

46. Percentages are calculated from data contained in Hoffmann, Wachstum, pp. 204-5. The figures given here are for the territory embraced by the later Germany (that of 1871-1917) but without Alsace and Lorraine (see p. 2 for the details).

47. Engels, Germany, p. 124. On the role of individuals, one might, as an exercise of imagination, ask if things would have turned out differently if Frederick the Great had been in command at Jena in 1806. One knowledgeable expert, Napoleon Bonaparte, certainly thought so.

    Leopold von Ranke, described as the father of scientific history, was easily the most important academic historian in Germany in the nineteenth century. The historian's task, as he saw it, was to report the past “as it really was” (wie es eigentlich gewesen ist). That meant the elimination of philosophical and theoretical considerations. As one writer put it, Ranke was “determined to hold strictly to the facts of history, to preach no sermon, to point no moral, to adorn no tale, but to tell the simple historic truth.” His principal methodological innovation was the demand for reliance on documentary evidence and for critical assessment of those sources. History in his hands, not too surprisingly, came to be a narration of unique events, accounts filled with flukes, accidents, and happenstance. Marx's attitude toward Ranke was, to say the least, very negative. For a summary portrait of Ranke's orientation and influence, see Iggers, German Conception, chap. 4. On Marx's attitude, see Padover, Karl Marx, pp. 72-73.

48. The procedure appears first in “The Status Quo,” p. 44. The “Addendum” follows the same route—only with a detour. It discusses the monarchy, specifying a modern, Bonapartist variety of the species, treating it as a special transitional case. See n. 41 above.

49. For a more differentiated portrait of the bureaucracy, see Sheehan, German History, pp. 517-23. Nowadays, one has evidence on these questions; one is not reduced to a priori speculation and guesswork. For a useful review, see Putnam, Comparative Study, pp. 92-103.

50. The same questions arise in connection with a still-later regime, that of Adolf Hitler. See Burin, “Bureaucracy and National Socialism,” for an early general consideration. For a time at least there was some question as to whether the Holocaust reflected leadership directives or a bureaucratic impulse. The best recent work on the subject leaves little doubt as to the centrality of Hitler's role. See Fleming, Hitler .

51. The comments in this paragraph overlook another problem posed by the terms “short” and “long.” Marx and Engels saw the entire capitalist epoch as a short-term event, one that would end with the next economic crisis.

52. Engels's strong voluntarism stands in sharp contrast to the determinism argued in his later works (see the discussion in Chapter 1 above). The positions are clearly contradictory. The commitment to determinism, however, in no way inhibited Engels, or Marx for that matter, from arguments and plans for strategic interventions. The arguments of the anti-Engels writers are doubly selective: they omit both Engels's voluntarism and Marx's determinism.