By RAFAEL DE ALMEIDA PADIAL*
To carry out the permanent revolution, it would be essential to have a proletarian party independent of the bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie.
Na previous part In this text, we have followed the development of Karl Marx's political positions shortly before the 1848 revolution and in its initial phase. In particular, we have seen how the author defended a strategy that we could call “democratic-revolutionary”. However, amid the impasses of the German revolution of 1848, he was led to develop concepts that contradict the mere notion of “democracy”: the ideas of dictatorship and revolutionary terrorism.
As we have mentioned, Marx largely followed what historical experience had left him, particularly that of the French Revolution of 1789 (with emphasis on the period of the National Convention). Based on this, he defended a certain strategy of dual power, in which revolutionaries would rely on the legislative power to overthrow the executive branch of the State.
In this second part, we will see how Marx understood – after a difficult and contradictory process – that the elements described above were insufficient for the revolutionary strategy of the proletariat.
The beginning of the balance of the revolution of 1848
By the second half of 1848, it was relatively clear that the revolution, after reaching its peak, was at an impasse. In June 1848, in Prussia, the centrist Camphausen ministry (formed after the March Revolution) was dissolved by the king, who felt more comfortable in circumventing reformist and liberal initiatives. In its place, another, more right-wing ministry was established. In France, the working class was massacred in the June 1848 uprising and General Louis-Eugène Cavaignac established a “republican” dictatorship. In the same country, in December 1848, Louis Bonaparte was elected.
Karl Marx, at the end of 1848, aware that the revolution was at an impasse, began to reflect on why it, in Germany, had not followed the paths of the English revolutions of 1648 and the French revolution of 1789. Why was there no dictatorship of the legislature or “revolutionary terrorism”? What would have been the specificity of the stalled German revolution?
In the important series of articles “The Bourgeoisie and the Counterrevolution”, published in December 1848 in NGR, Marx expressed the following:
“The revolutions of 1648 and 1789 were not English and French revolutions, they were European-type revolutions [European Styles]. They were not the victory of a particular class of society over the old political order; they were the proclamation of the political order for the new European society. The bourgeoisie triumphed in them, but the triumph of the bourgeoisie was then the triumph of a new social order […]
There was nothing like this in the Prussian revolution of March [1848].
[…] Far from being a European revolution, [the March Revolution] was only the atrophied result of a European revolution in a backward country [back to the country]. The Prussian March Revolution was not even national, German, but from the beginning provincial-Prussian.”[I]
As can be seen, Marx understood that the bourgeoisie had exercised a universal-historical mission in the English and French revolutions. In the German revolution, however, it would have been incapable of achieving such a mission. status. The reason is explained by the author on that same page, when dealing with the intention of the German revolution: “It was not about creating a new society, but about the rebirth in Berlin of the society that had already died in Paris”.
To understand this important sentence, we have to make a small leap across the Rhine and explain what had happened in Paris, the center of the European revolution, in June 1848.
Capitalist society dead in Paris
In France, on June 23, 1848, amid a situation of serious unemployment and having as a trigger the closure, by the Provisional Government, of the National Ateliers (which provided public work fronts), the first properly proletarian revolution against the order of capital broke out in Paris.[ii].
Marx’s analysis of the June Revolution of 1848 in Paris is one of the most beautiful in the NGR. In it, he commented that the French proletariat, by carrying out the first revolution of that year – that of February 1848 – and overthrowing King Louis Philippe, believed it had overthrown the entire bourgeois order (after all, Louis Philippe, of the House of Orléans, was known as the “Bourgeois King”, representing large sectors of capital). Thus, by overthrowing the monarch, the proletariat believed it had carried out its own revolution. However, the overthrow of this King was also in the interests of other important bourgeois and monarchist sectors (not represented by Louis Philippe), which, after the battles led by the proletariat in February – and due to the fact that it did not have its own political organization –, reaped the fruits of the revolution.
In other words: in the power vacuum, the bourgeoisie instituted a “democratic” parliament and its own constituent process, with the aim of representing, in the State, the maximum fractions of the ruling class. But this situation, of undue appropriation of other people’s fruits, lasted until June 1848, when the proletariat rose up against the entire newly instituted bourgeois-democratic order, understanding that with it everything had changed in order to remain the same.
In his article “The June Revolution”, Marx made a famous comment on the character of the two French revolutions of 1848 (February and June): “The February Revolution was the beautiful revolution, the revolution of general sympathy, because the contradictions that broke out in it against the monarchy lay dormant side by side, not yet developed; because the social struggle that formed it had only acquired an airy existence, an existence in the phrase, in the word. The June Revolution is the ugly revolution, the repulsive revolution, because the fact took the place of the phrase, because the republic laid bare its own monstrous head by removing the crown that protected and concealed it.”[iii]
The proletarian uprising of June was crushed by the troops of General Cavaignac, the political representative of the democratic and republican bourgeoisie, with the support of the “radical” republicans (“social democrats”) as well as the monarchist factions of the bourgeoisie (the “Party of Order”). Three thousand Parisian insurgents were killed and more than 15 thousand were arrested or extradited. General Cavaignac established in practice, until the elections of December 1848, a bourgeois dictatorship supported by the legislature. In fact, the defeat of June meant a turning point for all the European revolutionary initiatives of 1848/49 (even those of a merely national character).
For Marx, the defeat of the proletariat in the June Revolution had universal historical consequences. In all European nations, the bourgeoisie would assume a different role in class struggles, since its social order had historically died in Paris. After the initial spontaneous outbursts, bourgeois revolutions would follow a downward movement instead of an ascending process, in which the bourgeoisie would rely on the reactionary classes to impede the progress of the working class.
“Only counterrevolution or revolution are possible”
Considering the above element, let us return to Germany and to the important series of texts written by Marx in December 1848, “The Bourgeoisie and the Counterrevolution”. Here is how the author expressed himself about the loss of initiative of the German capitalist upper class: “The German bourgeoisie developed so indolently, cowardly and slowly that, at the moment when it threatened feudalism and absolutism, it found itself threateningly facing the proletariat and all the factions of the bourgeoisie whose interests and ideas are related to the proletariat. […] [It] was from the beginning inclined to betray the people and to compromise with the crowned representative of the old society […] [it is] without initiative, without faith in itself, without faith in the people, without a world-historical vocation [globally diverse work] ”[iv]
A few days later, in the same important series of articles, Marx concluded: “The history of the Prussian bourgeoisie, and of the German bourgeoisie in general, from March to December, shows that in Germany a purely bourgeois revolution and the establishment of bourgeois rule in the form of a constitutional monarchy are impossible [impossible]; that only the absolutist feudal counterrevolution or the social-republican revolution are possible [nur die feudale absolutistische Kontrerevolution möglich ist oder die social republikanische Revolution]. "[v]
This passage is of great importance. In previous years, Marx had only criticized those who advocated a bourgeois republic or the establishment of a constitutional monarchy, as these should not be the desired end in the struggle for social transformation.[vi]. It would be possible to go further. Now, in a different sense, he not only criticizes such conceptions, but states that they are historically impossible. At least in Germany, there would be no intermediate space between the counterrevolution and the “social-republican” revolution (the term by which Marx understood the communist-type revolution)[vii]). Thus, the entire initiative for universal historical progress would pass into the hands of the proletariat.
Marx against permanent revolution
People accustomed to the debates of the so-called “Marxist tradition” know what these new conceptions of Marx, outlined above, entail. If only “feudal-absolutist counter-revolution or communist revolution are possible”, then there would be no independent bourgeois-democratic historical stage for the revolution in Germany. This means that the revolution in such a situation would have to be permanent until the establishment of communist society. The term “permanent revolution” was already used by revolutionaries in Marx’s time (and, in the opposite sense, by conservatives fighting against it).[viii]
However, Marx seems to have difficulty accepting the term and drawing all the conclusions from what he himself had written in the series “The Bourgeoisie and the Counterrevolution”. So much so that, a month later, he published in two parts an article entitled “Montesquieu LVI”, in which he seemed to return to staged conceptions of revolution. The article sought to respond to a bourgeois representative (“Mr. Dumont”) who, in Kölnische Zeitung [Cologne Gazette, rival of NGR], argued that the “social question” (the misery of the population) would be better resolved if the bourgeois representatives stopped opposing the Prussian monarchy and simply approved the constitution proposed by it.
Marx criticizes “Mr. Dumont” by correctly highlighting the contradictions in his argument. In several passages, our author makes use of his new “conception of history” [Geschichtsauffassung], developed with Engels in 1845/46 (in the manuscript now called “German Ideology”), and shows that the interests of the Prussian state made the development of capitalist relations unfeasible. Thus, in a “dialectical inversion”, Marx sought to show that Dumont’s arguments turned against himself, since his claims for progress would not be realized with the maintenance of the Prussian monarchical order.
However, as if sensing a criticism from the left, Marx suddenly felt the need to justify himself. His speech against Dumont could have given the mistaken impression that he also wanted the development of capitalist relations in Germany.
Here is what Marx suddenly introduced in the second part of the article (January 21, 1849): “We are certainly the last to desire the rule of the bourgeoisie. We were the first in Germany to raise our voices against it, when the present ‘men of action’ were still entirely occupied with their noisy secondary disputes.”[ix]
Fortuitously, Marx revealed his critics on the left: the “men of action” [Man of the Tattoo] who supposedly got carried away by “petty” or “noisy” disputes [crackle] within the workers' movement. The reference is to Moses Heß and some of his followers, especially the physician Andreas Gottschalk, a prominent member of the Communist League in Cologne and later founder and director of the powerful Cologne Workers' Association during the first phase of the revolution in Germany[X]. The local Workers' Association was a rival of the local Democratic Association (founded by Marx, among others, and in whose name the Communist League had been suspended). Furthermore, the Workers' Association criticized the political line of the NGR.
After freely revealing who was needle-sharing him on the left, Marx once again expressed a stage-based conception of revolution, in a passage that has already provoked and still provokes heated debates. He wrote the following: “But we say to the workers and petty bourgeoisie: it is better to suffer [The only thing left to do is to take care of yourself] in modern bourgeois society, which, through its industry, creates the material means for the foundation of a new society that will liberate you all, than to return to a social form of the past, which, under the pretext of saving its classes, would drag the entire nation back to medieval barbarism!”[xi]
It is difficult not to see a contradiction in Marx during this period. After all, a month earlier he had stated that only a feudal-absolutist counterrevolution or a communist revolution were possible in Germany; now he claims that something that he previously considered historically impossible (the bourgeois order) is preferable to absolutism.
As is still the case, at the time this statement generated controversy. Shortly afterwards, in the newspaper Freedom, Work [Freedom, Labor], the organ of the Cologne Workers' Association, Gottschalk responded severely in a text entitled “To Mr. Karl Marx.” Gottschalk seemed furious not only with the strategic conception expressed by Marx, but also with the fact that on another occasion he recommended voting for bourgeois-democratic representatives (Raveaux and Schneider) who were running for the Frankfurt Assembly. For Gottschalk, it would be preferable to vote for workers' representatives, even if they had no chance of winning.
In his text, published on the cover of the small newspaper, Gottschalk criticized the support given by Marx to such subjects, he quoted literally the passage above NGR (about it being preferable to suffer in bourgeois society) and stated: “Since February, we, the ‘men of noisy secondary disputes’, have been involved in the revolution. But what is the point of a revolution? Why should we, men of the proletariat, shed our blood, if in reality, in order to escape the hell of the Middle Ages, we must – as you preach, Mr. Preacher – voluntarily throw ourselves into the purgatory of a decrepit capitalist rule, in order to then reach the cloudy heaven of your ‘communist creed’?”[xii]
As can be seen, the strategy of a revolution by stages (first accomplishing one thing, then another) is criticized there. It is not for nothing that Gottschalk then linked his conception to the strategy of permanent revolution and maintained that all paths of revolution were still open: “We, the ‘men of noisy secondary disputes’, are not prophets. We do not know what will become of our revolution. For us, apart from the possibility of bourgeois rule, which you present as something necessary [nothwendig], there are still other possibilities, such as, for example, a new revolution, the permanent [Stay], or even, if you like, the destruction of our nationality, the disappearance of the German people into Cossackism, its merger into the French Republic, etc., etc. We, the revolutionary proletarian party, which knows no compromise, have nothing to fear – least of all a relapse into medieval barbarism.”[xiii]
Gottschalk accused Marx of being afraid to carry out the revolution. Continuing his attacks on the order of things, he stated: “You are not really committed to the liberation of the oppressed. The misery of the worker, the hunger of the poor, have for you only a scientific, doctrinal interest. You are above such trifles. As a learned sun-god, you only illuminate the parties. You are not touched by what moves the hearts of the people. You do not believe in the cause you pretend to represent. Yes, despite the fact that you are shaping the German revolution every day according to the model of accomplished facts, and despite your ‘communist creed’, you do not believe in the revolt of the working people, whose rising tides are already preparing the ruin of capital. You do not believe in the permanence of the revolution [an die Permanence of Revolution], does not even believe in his own revolutionary capacity.”[xiv]
Finally, Gottschalk criticized the recommendation of bourgeois-democratic candidates and again linked such a position of Marx to the non-acceptance of the theory of permanent revolution: “And now, after it has become clear that we [the democrats] were mistaken, that we cannot expect anything from any other people than our own, that we, the revolutionary proletarian party, cannot count on any other class than our own, that therefore we have nothing to do but to make the revolution permanent [die Revolution permanent zu machen] – now, just now, you recommend to us figures who are admittedly weak and insignificant, people whom no party has ever been able or willing to trust.”[xv]
Marx for permanent revolution
Such criticism undoubtedly resonated deeply with Marx. It is true that Gottschalk was no longer, at the time (and after months of imprisonment), the main leader of the Cologne Workers' Association. This organization began to change leadership, with people closer to Marx taking over. Even so, Gottschalk seems to have given vent to a criticism shared by other activists of the time. This is possibly proven by the fact that Marx himself, in the later period, incorporated many of these criticisms.
In the beginning of April, 1849, our author began publishing in parts, in NGR, from his work “Wage Labor and Capital” (which, in turn, was the result of a lecture given in 1847 at the Brussels Workers’ Association). Thus, he gave the newspaper a more proletarian character. A few days later (April 15), Marx publicly announced his break with the Cologne Democratic Association.
Here is what he wrote when he announced his departure from the organization: “We consider that the present organization of the Democratic Association contains too many heterogeneous elements to allow for an enriching activity for the cause. We are of the opinion that a closer connection with the workers’ associations is preferable, since their composition is homogeneous; therefore, from now on, we will no longer be part of the Committee of the Democratic Associations of the Rhineland.”[xvi]
On May 16, 1849, under Prussian pressure, Marx was ordered to leave the territories of the German Confederation. Three days later, in red font, the last issue of the NGR[xvii]. Soon after, Marx left for Paris, where he witnessed the ill-fated uprising of the “mountain” petty bourgeoisie. At the beginning of June 1849, he settled in London (which became his residence for the rest of his life). Some of his closest companions, such as Engels, went on to fight in the people’s armies in Germany, but were soon defeated and (those who survived) took refuge in England or the USA. Gottschalk died tragically in 1849 due to the cholera epidemic while caring for infected patients.
At the end of 1849, the Communist League began to be reorganized in London under the leadership of Marx, Engels, K. Schapper and A. Willich. The idea was to prepare the organization for a possible and supposedly not distant new revolutionary wave. Above all, it was necessary to take stock of the revolutionary activity in 1848/49 and establish new strategies and tactics for the organization.
In March 1850, an important document, later to become famous, written by Marx and Engels, circulated within the League: the first “Message of the Central Committee to the Communist League”. In this document, in particular, one can see the change in Marx’s strategic positions. It is a clear self-criticism. Right at the beginning of the document, it is lamented that the “solid organization of the League has weakened” during the revolution.
The reason is explained as follows: “A large part of the members, directly involved in the revolutionary movement, believed that the time of secret societies had passed and that public action, in itself, was sufficient”.[xviii]
Among this “large party,” of course, was Marx himself. On the same page, the text laments that while the proletarian party lost its only solid base with the League, the “democratic party, the party of the petty bourgeoisie, was growing stronger.” Such a party would be “more dangerous to the workers than the previous liberal party” in the next revolution. It further argues that these “petty bourgeois republicans” then called themselves “Reds and Social Democrats” or “Socialists”; and that their representatives “were the members of the democratic congresses and committees, the leaders of the Democratic Associations, the editors of democratic newspapers.”[xx].
According to Marx and Engels, the program of the petty-bourgeois democrats should be rejected, as it contained demands such as “public credit institutions and a law against usury”, “favorable conditions for advances [of credit] from the State”, “limitation of the right of inheritance”, “handing over to the State the greatest number of jobs”[xx], “agrarian reform”[xxx] etc. As can be seen, claims similar to those contained at the end of the second chapter of Communist Party Manifesto and in the pamphlet of the Seventeen Demands of the Communist Party in Germany.
By denying the role of democratic associations and the program with which they intervened during 1848, Marx and Engels thus established the negation of the previous democratic-revolutionary strategy. It is not by chance that they express, for the first time, their adherence to the strategy of permanent revolution.
After presenting the demands of petty-bourgeois democracy (contained in the paragraph above), the authors state the following: “While the democratic petty-bourgeoisie wants [with such demands] to complete the revolution as quickly as possible, […] our interests and our tasks consist in making the revolution permanent [die Revolution permanent zu machen] until all more or less possessing classes are driven from power, until state power is conquered by the proletariat, until the association of the proletarians develops, not only in one country, but in all the dominant countries of the world, until competition between the proletarians in these countries ceases, and at least the decisive productive forces are concentrated in the hands of the proletariat.”[xxiii]
Interestingly, the expression “die Revolution permanent zu machen” is literally the same one used by Gottschalk against Marx.
In order to carry out the permanent revolution, it would be essential to have a proletarian party independent of the bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie. It would therefore be necessary to carry out the opposite of the dissolution of the communists in the legal/public activity of the democratic associations: “Instead of once again lowering themselves to serving as a laudatory chorus for the bourgeois democrats, the workers – especially the League – must strive to establish, alongside the official democrats, an autonomous organization [self-esteem], both secret and public [happy and cheerful], of the workers' party, and to make each community a center and nucleus of workers' associations, in which the position and interests of the proletariat are debated independently of bourgeois influences.”[xxiii]
In the name of maintaining class independence, it would be necessary to put forward proletarian candidates, even under conditions in which they have no chance of victory. One should not fear the accusation that this would split the democratic front against reaction: “Everywhere, alongside the bourgeois democratic candidates, workers’ candidates should be put forward […]. Even where there is no prospect of success, the workers must put forward their own candidates in order to preserve their independence, to measure their strength and to bring their revolutionary position and party principles to the public.”
“They must not be seduced by the phrases of the democrats – such as, for example, the claim that this would split the democratic party and give the reaction the possibility of victory. […] The advances that the proletarian party must achieve through this independent action are infinitely more important than the damage that the presence of a few reactionaries in the political representation could cause.”[xxv]
As can be seen, many of Gottschalk's criticisms were incorporated by Marx and Engels in the message of 1850. There is, however, a new element of the greatest importance, not present in the critic's letter: the need for a duality of power of a new type, of a proletarian character.
If Marx had previously conceived of the duality of power in a struggle between the legislative and executive powers (both powers of the same State), he now expresses himself thus: “They [the revolutionaries] must, parallel to the new official governments, at the same time establish their own revolutionary workers' governments [revolutionäre Arbeiterregierungen], either in the form of communal councils [local councils], communal chambers, workers' clubs or workers' committees. In this way, bourgeois democratic governments will not only immediately lose the support of the workers, but will also find themselves from the very beginning under surveillance and threat from authorities supported by the entire mass of the workers.”[xxiv]
As can be seen, instead of the struggle between the Legislative and Executive branches, which was previously desired, the need to create a parallel power opposed to the State as a whole (Executive and Legislative) is now being supported. It is not clear, however, what this conflict would look like (whether it should be formed, for example, as something like a “dictatorship of the proletariat”)[xxv].
Significantly, Marx and Engels close the text with the following statement: “Their battle cry [of the German proletariat] must be: revolution in permanence [The Revolution in Permanence] ”[xxviii].
*Rafael de Almeida Padial holds a PhD in Philosophy from Unicamp. Author of On Marx's transition to communism (Mall). [https://amzn.to/3PDCzMe]
To read the first article in this series, click https://aterraeredonda.com.br/1848-revolucao-e-bonapartismo/
References
CLAUDIN, F., Marx, Engels and the revolution of 1848, Madrid: Siglo Veinteuno, 1985;
CZOBEL, E., Freiheit, Arbeit, Organ des Kölner Arbeitsvereins. No. 1–33, Cologne 14 January–24 June 1849. With an introduction by Hans Stein. Glaushütten: Detlev Auvermann KG, 1972;
DAY, R., & GAIDO, D., Witnesses to Permanent Revolution, Chicago/Leiden: Haymarket/Brill, 2009;
GOTTSCHALK, A. (in an anonymous publication). “An Herrn Karl Marx”, in Freedom, work, no. 13, February 25, 1849;
MARX, K., “Die Bourgeoisie und die Kontrerevolution”. In MEW, volume 06, Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1961;
______. “Die Junirevolution”. In MEW, volume 05, Berlin: Dietz, 1959;
______. “Montesquieu LVI”. In MEW, volume 06, Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1961;
______. “Erklärung” (April 15, 1849), in MEW, volume 06, Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1961;
MARX, K., & ENGELS, K., “Ansprache der Zentralbehörde an den Bund vom März 1850”, in MEW, vol. 7, Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1960;
NICOLAEVSKY, B. & MAENCHEN-HELFEN, O., Karl Marx: man and fighter. Penguin, 1976.
Notes
[I] Ibidem, “Die Bourgeoisie und die Kontrerevolution” [“The Bourgeoisie and the Counterrevolution”], specifically the article of 15/12/1848, in MEW, volume 06, Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1961, pp. 107-08.
[ii] The National Ateliers were implemented on the initiative of Louis Blanc, following ideas expressed in his book The Organization of Work. After the February Revolution of 1848, Blanc took over as Minister of Labor in the provisional government, where he was able to put his ideas into practice. Shortly afterwards, however, he was sidelined from the government and the national workshops were closed.
[iii] Same, “Die Junirevolution” [“The June Revolution”], 29/06/1848. In MEW, vol. 05, op. cit., p. 134.
[iv] Ibidem, “Die Bourgeoisie und die Kontrerevolution”, op. cit., pp. 108-09.
[v] See Ibidem, p. 124. In a sense, the content of “German misery” can be seen in the letters between Marx and Arnold Ruge in 1842 and 1843. In passages from Kreuznach Manuscript, In 1843, Marx also expressed that the German bourgeoisie was too powerless. Still, it seems that he decided to give the bourgeoisie a chance in 1848.
[vi] On criticism of constitutional monarchy, see particularly his letters to Arnold Ruge in 1842 and 1843, and the Kreuznach Manuscript, from the end of 1843.
[vii] In the first chapter of Eighteenth Brumaire, Marx asserts that the aim of the French proletariat in February 1848 was to establish not a “republic” but a “social republic.” At the beginning of the seventh chapter of the same book, the “social republic” is directly linked to the uprising of June 1848.
[viii] The term “permanent revolution” developed among French communists at the beginning of the 19th century, based on the idea that the next revolution could not be merely democratic or republican, but only communist. As F. Claudín recalls, the term “permanent revolution”, although not highlighted, had already appeared in the work A Holy Family, by Marx and Engels (written at the end of 1844). Cf. CLAUDÍN, F., Marx, Engels and the revolution of 1848, Madrid: Siglo Veinteuno, 1985, p. 423. Day and Gaido also recall a reference prior to that of Holy Family, in “The Jewish Question”, in Franco-German Annals (see first chapter of DAY, R., & GAIDO, D., Witnesses to Permanent Revolution, Chicago/Leiden: Haymarket/Brill, 2009).
[ix] MARX, K. “Montesquieu LVI”, in MEW, volume 06, on. cit., P. 195.
[X] Heß developed the “philosophy of praxis” in 1843, which he believed was to be led by “men of action”. He thus became the main theoretician of “true socialism” or “German socialism”, a humanist (Feuerbachian) socialism that had many followers among the Germans until the revolution of 1848. Marx was greatly influenced by Heß until mid-1845, but later broke with this conception. On this subject, see our book On Marx's Passage to Communism. On Gottschalk, see especially NICOLAEVSKY, B. & MAENCHEN-HELFEN, O., Karl Marx: man and fighter. Penguin, 1976, chaps. 13, 14 and 15.
[xi] Ibidem, P. 195.
[xii] GOTTSCHALK, A. (in an anonymous publication). “An Herrn Karl Marx”, in Freedom, work, n. 13, February 25, 1849, p. 2. See the originals in CZOBEL, E., Freiheit, Arbeit, Organ des Kölner Arbeitsvereins. No. 1–33, Cologne 14 January – 24 June 1849. With an introduction by Hans Stein. Glaushütten: Detlev Auvermann KG, 1972, p. 52.
[xiii] Ibidem, p. 2 [p. 52 of the Czobel edition]. The German follows the old-fashioned spelling of the time.
[xiv] Ibidem, p. 2 [p. 52 of the Czobel edition].
[xv] Ibidem, p. 2 [p. 52 of the Czobel edition].
[xvi] MARX, K., “Erklärung” (April 15, 1849), in MEW, volume 06, on. cit., p. 426. In addition to Marx, the following are the authors: Fr. Anneke, K. Schapper, H. Becker and W. Wolff.
[xvii] It became a collector's item, being framed and sold, in the 19th century, for a high price.
[xviii] Cf. MARX, K., & ENGELS, K., “Ansprache der Zentralbehörde an den Bund vom März 1850”, in MEW, vol. 7, Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1960, p. 244.
[xx] Ibidem, P. 246.
[xx] Ibidem, P. 247.
[xxx] Ibidem, P. 251.
[xxiii] Ibidem, p. 247–48.
[xxiii] Ibidem, p. 248–49.
[xxv] Ibidem, P. 251.
[xxiv] Ibidem, p. 250. Note that the “communal” of the councils, present there (in “local councils”), can have the meaning of “municipal”, as also occurred later, in the Paris Commune.
[xxv] The “message”, in our view, has limitations. The relationship with the State is ambiguous, since a parallel power is defended, but it is not clear whether this parallel power would ultimately replace the official State. Some demands appear in the text with a statist character. Furthermore, the demands of the proletarians are always established depending on the demands of the “petty-bourgeois democrats” (seeking radicalized ones). Despite the new strategy and tactics, programmatic independence seems to be lacking in the scope of demands. As for the question of the State, only the experience of the Commune will provide the “finally found form” (Marx’s words) for society beyond capitalism. As for the question of demands (a properly methodological question), Marx will try to answer from The capital, also understood as SCHEDULE. Regarding this, see BENOIT, H., “On the (dialectical) criticism of The capital", In Marxist Criticism. New York: Routledge, 3.
[xxviii] Ibidem, P. 254.
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