DEUTSCHMA RX : MA RX , ENGEL S, A ND

T HE GERMA N QUESTI ON*

MI CHA EL L EV I N
University of London, Goldsmiths College
Ahsrrucr. Marx and Engelss analysis of German society can be fruitfully viewed as a
materialist adaptation of earlier Romantic views on German special development. The failure
to develop a strong bourgeois class meant that Germanys pattern of development differed
markedly from the general theory outlined in Part One of the Manifesto. If the bourgeoisie
could not further the development of society, that task necessarily fell to the German
proletariat, thereby placing them at the head of the international workers movement. Thus
the initial relative backwardness of the German working class could be transformed into a
position prior to that of England, the country that industrialized first, and France, where the
most complete bourgeois revolution had occurred.
The Communists turn their attention chiefly to Germany.
AMONG the vast corpus of commentary on Marx and Engelss writings the
relative neglect of their analysis of German society is surprising for a number
of reasons. I t was, after all, the country in which they were born, grew up,
came to political consciousness and first engaged in political activity.
Furthermore a starkly explicit statement of German pre-eminence in the
advance to communism is contained in their best-known short work, and is
part of a brief analysis which raises crucial questions concerning not just the
coherence of the Communist Manifisto itself but also of Marxist theory as a
whole.
Before turning to the Manifesto let us briefly consider the background
factors which made possible the statement with which this enquiry commences.
It was written during The Hungry Forties, the time of German hunger riots,
the 1844 Weavers Revolt and mass emigration to the United States. Signs of
discontent were there for all to see, and the early German socialists were
almost unanimously of the view that German conditions were outmoded and
due for radical reconstruction. In 1843 Moses Hess foresaw the closing of the
thought/action divide as itldugurating the reign of freedom and we are
standing at its portals and knocking upon them A year later Heinrich
Heine wrote that the masses will no longer tolerate their earthly poverty with
Christian patience and yearn for happiness on earth. Communism is a natural
consequence of this changed Weltanschauung and is spreading over the whole
* I am grateful to Neil Harding and Professor David McLellan for their comments on an earlier
* From the Mangesto of the Communisr Parry, Part IV, in Marx Engels Collected Works,
2 My italics. Quoted in A. Fried and R. Sanders (eds), Socialist Thought: A Documentary History
draft of this article.
henceforward referred to as MECW, Vol. 6 (London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1976). p. 519.
(New York, Doubleday, 1964). p. 271.
Political Studies, Vol. XXIX. No. 4 (537-554)
538 MARX, ENGELS, A N D THE GERMAN QUESTI ON
of germ an^'.^According to 0. J. Hammen the air was rife with communist
yearning^'.^For Marx the German situation was so bad that it filled him with
hope. The draft programme of the German-French Yearbooks (1 843) contained
a plan to review the literature and publications of the old regime of Germany
which is decaying and destroying itself, and finally a review of the books of
the two nations which mark the commencement and continuance of the new
era that we are entering.s Engels too, writing to the editor of the Northern
Star in April 1844, viewed Germany as being on the threshold of great
historical changes.
The political state of Germany is becoming more important every day. We shall have a
revolution there very shortly, which cannot but end in establishment of a Federal
Republic . . . The people are resolved to have a free press and constitution to begin with.
But there is so much combustible matter heaped up in all Germany and the shades of
opinion are so various, that i t is impossible to predict where the movement, if once
fairly commenced, may stop. However, i t will be in the direction toward democracy:
thus much is evident.6
GERMANY A N D EUROPE BEFORE 1848
The precise justification for the Manijiesto statement on Germanys
vanguard role will emerge later. At this stage the extent to which it fits in as a
variant of the special development (Sonderentwicklung) theory of German
Romantic nationalism should be noted. During the period of occupation by
the Napoleonic armies the view emerged that, whatever its military and
political weaknesses, Germany had a spiritual mission to fulfil. Novalis, in Die
Christenheit oder Europa, 1799, believed that whereas the rest of the continent
was absorbed in war, speculation and party politics, the Germans are applying
themselves to becoming partners in a new and better epoch of civilization,
which in time will give them a substantial ascendancy over the others. In the
following few years Friedrich Schlegel, Holderlin and Schiller all presented
Germany as the leading force that could change world history. With Schiller,
Fichte and Arndt Germanys world role became more closely based on its
assumed linguistic superiority. Like Fichte, Arndt believed that of all
European peoples only the Germans could boast of an original and undefiled
language, an Ursprache, not a mongrel language as did the others. The purity
of language and race established the superiority of the Germans over the
French and the Italians, the Englishmen and the Spaniards.8
The notion of German uniqueness developed out of the context of Romantic
thought, which, as a counter to Enlightenment and Revolutionary universa-
lism, propounded numerous accounts of the uniqueness and distinctiveness of
all nations, cultures and individuals. Schleiermacher took the view that every
From Aus den Briefen iiber Deutschland, 1844, in H. Heine, Zur Geschichte der Religion und
0. J. Hammen, The Spectre of Communism in the 1840s, Journal ofrhe History ofIdeas, 14
Written August-September 1843. MECW. Vol. 3 (London. Lawrence and Wishart, 1975).
MECW, Vol. 3, pp: 514, 516.
Philosophie in Deufschland (Frankfurt am-Main, Insel Verlag, 1965), p. 21 I .
(1953). p. 404.
p. 131.
Novalis, Dichtungen (Reinbek bei Hamburg, Rowohlt, 1973), p. 47.
* H. Kohn, The Mind of Germany (London, Macmillan, 1965), p. 77.
MI CHAEL LEVI N 539
language is a particular mode of thought and what is cogitated in one language
can never be repeated in the same way in another.. . Language, thus, like the
church or the state, is an expression of a peculiar life.9 However, this theory
underwent a crucial transformation when the content of a particular
uniqueness was designated as superiority ; when particularism was represented
as the embodiment of a higher aspect of the universal. Schiller regarded the
Germans as the universal people whose destiny i t was to fulfil the aspirations
of all mankind, and J ahn wrote of the German as a universal man
(Allerwt.1lmmsc.h) to whom God has given the whole world as his home.lo
Clearly, at this stage the theory of universal particularisms has been
transformed into one of particular universalisms.
The notion of German linguistic superiority emerged closely and often
logically interconnected with a similar claim in respect of German thought.
Traces of this latter idea can be found in the writings of both Hess and Marx in
the 184Os, but for them such development was one-sided. Thought on its own
was inadequate. I t must seek the means to actualize itself. Hess sought to
connect it with a political will, which he found in France. Thus-a significant
step-he put Germany on the same level as France. Each had advanced in a
one-sided way and needed the other to redress the balance. France needed
German philosophy as much as Germany needed French political action. For
Germany it is now the task of the philosophy of the spirit to become the
philosophy of the act. For the young Marx also Germany was the land of
theory, France of practice. Germany had produced, in Hegel, the greatest
philosopher of the age, and France, in its Great Revolution of 1789, and in
that of 1830, the foremost political movement; but German philosophy was
without political commitment while French politics was devoid of adequate
theoretical foundations. I t is this concern that underlay the production of the
significantly titled German-French Yearbooks which Marx and Ruge produced
in 1844, and in which Marxs first important theoretical publications are to be
found. Thus one-sidedness in certain aspects of national development was to
be overcome by the proposed amalgamation of French politics with German
philosophy.
As against right-wing nationalist theorists of sanderenruiekfung Marx and
the intellectual left wing did not regard Germany as self-sufficient. For the
right wing France was the traditional enemy; its language, culture and
revolutionary politics were to be avoided at all costs. Hatred of the French
became a duty. Every kind of thinking which could rise to a higher viewpoint
was condemned as un-German.I2 Thus wrote Marx in 1841, for whom, in the
following years, France shone brightly as a beacon of modernity. The new
capital of the new world was how he described Paris in September, 1843.13
Thomas Mann once suggested that, like Russia, Germany also had its
Quoted in E. Kedourie, Nationalism (London, Hutchinson, 1961). p. 63.
l o Quoted in Kohn, The Mind oj Germany, pp. 59, 80.
I Fried and Sanders, Socialist Thought, p. 264.
l 2 MECW, Vol. 2 (London, Lawrence and Wishart. 1975), p. 141.
l 3 MECW, Vol. 3, p. 142. Also see MECW, Vol. 5 (London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1976), pp.
41 1-12, and D. McLellan, Marx before Marxism (Harmondsworth, Middx., Penguin, 1972). pp.
169, 199.
540 MARX, ENGELS, A N D T HE GE RMAN QUES TI ON
Slavophiles (Germanophiles) and its Westernizers. Marx clearly belonged to
the latter. He wanted Germany to overcome its backwardness and enter the
mainstream of European history, rather than wage the War against the West.
Engels was later to write of the great historical nations of the west, the English
and the French, compared with the backward Germans.Is In similar vein
Marx pointed out that The revolutions of 1648 and 1789 were not English and
French revolutions; they were revolutions of a European type. They did not
represent the victory of a particular class of society over the oldpolitical order;
they proclaimed the political order of the new European society.16
How, then, was a country so stagnant as Germany to enter into the
mainstream of European history? How does one expose the old world to the
full light of day and shape the new one in a positive way?Is Although in 1843
Marx appeared to be primarily concerned with the reform of cons~iousness~
he was in fact already working towards the identification of the proletariat as
the force that could actualize philosophy and thereby modernize Germany.
In his introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegels Philosophy of
Right (18434) Marx saw Germany as lying a whole historical stage behind
England and France. The old corrupt condition against which these countries
are rebelling in theory and which they only bear as one bears chains is greeted
in Germany as the dawn of a beautiful future.*O Germany had entered the
modern world only in respect of its suffering and thinking. In politics the
Germans thought what other nations did.21 A wide gulf had appeared
between German thought and German reality, but this dislocation could be
resolved, for theory also becomes a material force as soon as it has gripped the
masses.22 In Germany no kind of bondage can be broken without breaking
every kind of bondage,23 and so the proletariat, as the representative of
universal aspirations, presented the possibility of a German emancipation. 24
This optimism was soon reinforced by the Silesian weavers rebellion of
summer 1844. Theory and practice were nearing a harmonious consummation.
Not one of the French and English workers uprisings had such a theoretical
and conscious character as the uprising of the Silesian weavers.. . [which]
begins precisely with what the French and English workers uprisings end, with
consciousness of the nature of the proletariat . . . not a single English workers
uprising was carried out with such courage, thought and endurance. Marx
then went on to praise Weitlings Guarantees of Harmony and Freedom (1 842)
as the vehement and brilliant literary debut of the German worker^',^ which
reduced German bourgeois literature to the level of mediocrity. From these
auspicious beginnings Marx felt able to elevate the German working class to
l4 According to Kohn, The Mind of Germany, p. 262.
MECW, Vol. 8 (London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1977). p. 372.
MECW, Vol. 8, p. 161.
MECW, Vol. 5, p. 457.
MECW, Vol. 3, p. 141.
l 9 MECW, Vol. 3, p. 144.
2o MECW, Vol. 3, p. 179.
2 1 MECW, Vol. 3, p. 181.
z 2 MECW, Vol. 3, p. 182.
23 MECW, Vol. 3, p. 187.
24 MECW, Vol. 3, p. 186.
2 5 MECW, Vol. 3, p. 201.
MI CHA EL L EV l N 54 I
the level attained in their respective spheres by the English and French. 'It has
to be admitted that the German proletariat is the theoretician of the European
proletariat, just as the English proletariat is its economist, and the French its
politician'.26 Soon after Marx made a similar point concerning division of
labour at the national level.
What the nations have done as nations, they have done for human society; their whole
value consists only in the fact that each single nation has accomplished for the benefit of
other nations one of the main historical aspects [one of the main determinations] in the
framework of which mankind has accomplished its development, and therefore after
industry in England, politics in France and philosophy in Germany have been
developed, they have been developed for the world, and their world-historic
significance, as also that of these nations, has thereby come to an end.27
German philosophy, however, increasingly seemed to suffer from a defect
inherent in its advanced character-that is, an isolation from real life. By 1845
Marx regarded i t as quite unprepared for a conscious social role. Philosophy
had woven the most sophisticated mental webs; it had directed the imagination
towards understanding the whole historical process, it had reduced theology to
anthropology, but, crucially, i t had not related itself to its own society. 'I t has
not occurred to any one of these philosophers to enquire into the connection of
German philosophy with German reality, the connection of their criticism with
their own material surroundings'.28 Somewhat similar defects aMlicted German
communism which, through lack of clear-cut indigenous class distinctions, was
led to a misplaced adoption of French communist ideas.
Germany at this time was a cultural rather than a political concept. I t was a
demand of considerably audacity to place it alongside 'historic' nations with
several centuries of unity behind them. From the perspective of the 1840s the
German principalities and their inhabitants might conceivably have been
dismissed along with other 'non-historic nations' for which Engels in particular
had such contempt. Actually Marx and Engels could not avoid a certain
ambivalence on this question. In The Germun Ideology they still distinguished
between the 'Great nations-the French, North Americans, English' as against
'petty shopkeepers and philistines, like the Germans'.29 It is in this work that
Marx quite decisively adopted the theory of historical stages and thereby, as he
later put i t, settled 'accounts with our erstwhile philosophical con~ci ence'.~~
However, the break was not that clear-cut. Part IV of the Munifesro as well as
the March 1850 'Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League'
indicate that Marx oscillated between the two alternatives of Germany going
through the full sequence of developmental stages or attempting a short cut.
However, in summary, in the mid-1840s Marx and Engels saw the German
states system, economy, and class structure as anachronistic-but the emergent
working-class movement as making rapid strides forward. German philosophy
was sometimes praised, sometimes derided. What remained constant in their
analysis of all these factors (apart from the tendency to over-react, either
l6 MECW, Vol. 3, p. 202.
27 MECW, Vol. 4 (London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1975). p. 281.
28 MECW, Vol. 5, p. 30.
2 9 MECW, Vol. 5 , p. 441.
Jo Marx and Engels, Selected Works in Two Volumes, henceforward referred to as MESW
(Moscow, Foreign Languages Publishing House. 1962), Vol. I , p. 364.
542 MARX, ENGELS, A N D THE GERMAN QUESTI ON
positively or negatively, to every breath of German political life) was that they
were always considered in terms of the backwardness/forwardness question ;
always compared with an external norm; always in competition with a
standard of modernization compounded out of an amalgam of, primarily,
France and England, but sometimes also of Holland, Belgium and the USA.
These countries provided the norm from which Germany was held to diverge.
Germanys distance from their achievements was taken as the measure of its
peculiarity-a notion thus clearly dependent upon a prior frame of reference
for what was to be regarded as normal. The notion of German differentiation
from this norm, appears, somewhat paradoxically, as both a distancing from
the West but simultaneously an acknowledgement of it as a proper point of
reference.
There are, in any case, obvious dangers involved in Marx and Engelss
construction of a norm derived from various aspects of various countries. They
assume, rather than demonstrate, that the similarities are more significant than
the differences. There are numerous factors in the respective histories of
England and France that cannot be easily amalgamated (such as the role of
absolute monarchy, class consciousness, the Reformation, etc.), although
relative to Germany the significant common factors would be earlier national
unification and the stronger development of liberal ideology and a commercial
middle class.
It is all too clearly apparent how during the 1840s the French revolution of
1789 could be taken as the model of bourgeois political revolution and
England as the model of capitalist industrialization. As the first industrial
nation other countries could see in England their own economic future.
Aspects of this mentality are apparent in Engelss The Conditions of the
Working Class in England. However, this very factor detracts from Englands
use as a norm in that its industrialization process was necessarily unique-a
pioneer industrialization, whereas all other countries industrialized in the
context of those already ahead of them.
By the end of the 1840s Marx and Engelss analysis of German
distinctiveness had shifted from the area of theory to that of social structure.
By the time the Manifesto was being written the peculiarity of German
development was held to lie not in the forwardness of its thought but in the
backwardness of its social structure, as represented most significantly by the
weakness of its bourgeoisie. Furthermore this element of backwardness
becomes an advantage. It transforms itself into forwardness by facilitating the
drastic curtailment of the bourgeois stage of history.
THE COMMUNI ST MANI FESTO AND ITS APPLI CATI ON T O GERMANY
Let us now return to the Communist Manifesto, for it provides the central
point from which our various lines of enquiry radiate. The opening chapter is a
brief philosophy of history, the purpose of which is to provide a class context
for historical changes reaching as far back as Ancient Rome and forward to
the presumed victory of the proletariat. This well known summary account is
marked by a high level of generality and abstraction. There is hardly any
reference to a specific country. Industrializing Western Europe is taken as a
whole in terms of the general process it is undergoing. When Marx and Engels
MI C HA E L L E V l N 543
turned their attention from the general to the particular the famous simple
model of the Communist Manifesto was subjected to considerable amendment.
The process in fact began in the final section of the very same work, where
Germany appears as an exception to the general scheme. The peculiarity of
Germany is that a proletariat has emerged before the full victory of the
bourgeoisie. In Section I it appears that the full capitalist system, from which
the proletariat are produced, is a consequence of bourgeois power. Yet
capitalism in Germany is acknowledged to have developed without the
bourgeois conquest of political power. Economic and political developments
seem to be moving at a different pace although one had been led to regard the
latter as a product of the former. In the simple account the feudal state placed
fetters on the development of capitalism. For the bourgeois productive forces
to be fully exploited it was a necessity that these fetters be burst asunder. Yet
in Germany-in spite of the fetters of state structures with feudal remnants-a
bourgeois economic system had developed to the stage of producing a
proletariat class that was not only beginning to organize itself, but was actually
on the verge of assisting in a bourgeois revolution that will be but the prelude
to an immediately fbllowing proletarian rev~l uti on .~ I t was for this reason
that the communists turn their attention chiefly to Germany. a country
thought to be on the eve of a bourgeois revolution, rather than to France and
England, countries already well past that stage. Particular circumstances
evidently make it possible for a society to skip the full development of the
capitalist epoch of history, so here in the Marzi/ksto we find an analysis that
visualizes Germany not merely catching up with the historical nations of the
West but also taking the lead from them in advancing towards communism.
Note that this prognosis does not actually suggest that Germany will
dispense with a bourgeois revolution-although such a revolution will not be
uniquely theirs. I t will be made by the bourgeoisie in alliance with the
proletariat, who then wrest from them the normal full fruits of victory-i.e.
an epoch of class dominance. I t is already clear that Germany is assumed
capable of attaining socialism without many of what had earlier been
presented as necessary preconditions and that the assumption of bourgeois rule
constituting a whole historical epoch-as had feudalism-need not necessarily
apply. The peculiarity of German social development was more often
attributed primarily to the weaknesses of its bourgeoisie. In the Manifesto this
is not denied, but neither is i t where the emphasis lies. Rather it is the relative
strength of the proletariat that is to be the decisive factor. But the precise
nature of this strength-whether i t consisted of numbers, organization or
revolutionary fervour, or a combination of each-is left unexplained. In fact
the little we learn of German socialism in the Mani/esto suggests an immaturity
that quite unfits i t for the role of European leadership. I f its literature is any
index of general development, we must note that Marx and Engels described
German True socialism as the bombastic representative of the petty-
bourgeois Philistine.. . With very few exceptions all the so-called Socialist and
Communist publications that now (1 847) circulate in Germany belong to the
domain of this foul and enervating l i terat~re .~~
My italics. MECW, Vol. 6, p. 519
3z MECW, Vol. 6, pp. 512, 513.
544 MARX, ENGELS, A N D THE GERMAN QUESTI ON
A further point concerning Section IV-apart from its mention of Germany
as the place to which the communists chiefly turn their attention, is the list of
countries also considered-France, Switzerland and Poland, in order of
appearance. At least these are the countries for which the precise placing of the
Communists vis-h-vis other opposition parties is given. As for England and
America, the chapter begins by stating that Section I1 has made clear the
relations of the Communists to the existing working-class parties, such as the
Chartists in England and the Agrarian Reformers in America.33 However, if
one turns to Section I1 for elaboration one finds merely a general statement of
the relationship of communists to the proletarians as a ~hol e ~~- but no
explicit reference to either England or America. Thus, surprisingly, the
Manifesto contains not as much as one precise sentence on the context of
communist struggle in the most industrially advanced capitalist country of the
time. Yet in the very month (November 1847) that the Communist League
commissioned the preparation of their Manifesto, its authors had delivered
speeches containing the following pronouncements.
Murx: Of all countries, England is the one where the contradiction between the
proletariat and the bourgeoisie is most highly developed. The victory of the English
proletarians over the English bourgeoisie is, therefore, decisive for the victory of all the
oppressed over their oppressors.
Engels: I also believe that the first decisive blow which will lead to the victory of
democracy, to the liberation of all European nations will be struck by the English
Chartists.35
One should, of course, point out that these speeches were made in London,
whereas the Manifesro, although first published in London, was written
primarily for the German Labour Movement. Furthermore it was drafted
during the course of nearly a year of lectures and discussions with the
members of the German Workers Educational Ass~ci ati on .~~
Most of the writings on Germany in the 1840s were by Engels who, in a
number of ways, was less optimistic than Marx, expecting at most a German
1789. He could not, however, avoid the suspicion that the German bourgeoisie
were too weak-willed to take the opportunities that came their way. With his
more direct experience of Manchester and the Chartist movement, Engels
more consistently regarded England as forming the vanguard of political as
much as of economic advance. As an example of this difference of emphasis let
us compare the section on German predominance in the Communist Manifesto,
written by Marx, with its first draft, Principles of Communism, written by
Engels in October 1847. In answer to the question Will it be possible for this
revolution to take place in one country alone? Engels replied that communist
revolution will occur in all civilized countries at the same time, that is at least
in England, America, France and Germany. But in each of these countries it
would develop at a different pace, depending on the level of industry, wealth,
and productive strength. It will therefore be slowest and most difficult to carry
3 3 MECW, Vol. 6, p. 518.
34 MECW, Vol. 6, p. 497.
3 5 MECW, Vol. 6, p. 389.
36 R. Blackburn, Marxism: Theory of Proletarian Revolution, New Left Review, 97 (1976).
p. 7.
MI CHAEL LEVI N 545
out in Germany, quickest and easiest in England. Thus, when in possibly the
most optimistic year of their lives, Engels envisaged Germany being caught up
in worldwide revolution he saw her being pulled along by the general tide of
events rather than taking the lead.37
A few months later, in The Movement of 1847, Engels once again placed
England and America to the fore of the communist movement. Behind them
came France and Germany, and then Italy and S~i tzerl and. ~~ We must, then,
assume that the formulation in the Manifesto represents Marxs deliberate
revision of Engelss rather different emphasis on this question.
I n view of the leading role expected of the German working class i t is now
necessary to consider what attributes Marx and Engels expected of a socialist
movement ready for the seizure of state power. Section 11 of the Manifesto
notes that the immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all the
other proletarian parties: formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow
of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the pr~l etari at .~~
No hint of a time sequence is given nor any other factor concerning the
relationship of the first aim to the subsequent ones. However, only a few years
previously Marx wrote: The proletariat is coming into being in Germany only
as a result of the rising industrial movement.40 And just a mere half year
before the Manijesto was written Engels commented that the German workers
were not yet constituted into a class and would not be ready to attain a
dominant position for a long time. Their outlook was thoroughly petty-
bourgeois and, in fact, any advance in Germany at this time could only come
through the bo~rgeoi si e.~~
Furthermore, how large was this working class from whom so much was
expected? The Manifesto described the proletarian movement as the
independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immensc
This easily gives the impression that socialist revolution is simply a
quantitative victory in the battle of numbers. But as late as the 1870s Marx
wrote that the majoritj. of the toiling people in Germany consists of
peasants, and not of proletarian^'.^^And in France, sixty years after their
bourgeois revolution the most numerous class of French society were the
small-holding peasants.44 The simple view that size equals power, in some
ways intimated in the Manijesto, makes sense neither in terms of that work nor
of Marx and Engelss other writings. Thus the peasantry may be the largest
class in feudal and early capitalist society, yet in Marxist theory they are
always a lower class and never able to establish their own class rule This class
of the population is absolutely incapable of any revolutionary i ni ti ati ~e. ~~
The emergence of the bourgeoisie was attributed not to its size but to control
of a mode of production that had a clear growth potential which feudalism was
MECW, Vol. 6, pp. 351-2.
38 MECW, Vol. 6, p. 529.
39 MECW, Vol. 6, p. 498.
40 MECW, Vol. 3, p. 186.
4 1 MECW, Vol. 6, pp. 84-6.
42 My italics. MECW, Vol. 6, p. 495
43 My italics. MESW, Vol. 2, p. 31.
44 MESW, Vol. I , p. 333.
MESW, Vol. 1, p. 230.
546 MARX, ENGELS, A N D THE GE RMAN QUESTI ON
unable to contain. Its position had become too narrow for its expansive
power as Engels once put it.46
Numbers, then, are obviously a factor in class power, but they are not
everything. The revolutionary class is not necessarily the largest submerged
class, but that which combines strategic position and growth potential with
class consciousness and organization. On all these counts, however, any
proletarian revolution in Germany around the time the Manifesto was written
would have to be judged premature.
A further prerequisite for proletarian revolution is the full acquisition of the
bourgeois heritage. The notion that Germany could achieve socialism without
having first developed a capitalist economy, state, and ideology is prob-
lematical in this respect. The Manifesto assumes that one ruling class not only
creates its successor but also provides it with a political education. The
bourgeoisie itself, therefore, supplies the proletariat with its own elements of
political and general education, in other words, it furnishes the proletariat with
weapons for fighting the bo~rgeoisie.~ Clearly a working class coming to
power in the situation envisaged for Germany would miss out on much of the
liberal heritage. What, then, is this heritage and what are the consequences of
its curtailment prior to full development? Among the significant factors in this
respect are political centralization, high productivity, and the dominance of
liberal ideology in terms of both the free market and political participation.
Political centralization had not yet been achieved in Germany at the time the
Manifesto was written. Its achievement by the communists would have secured
for them the nationalist loyalties that went instead, not to the bourgeoisie, for
whom the 1848 revolution was ultimately a failure, but to the military and
Junker aristocratic class, who, with the prestige thereby attained, further
reinforced their hold on Germany for virtually half a century after 1870. The
need to achieve high productivity would have caught a dominant German
communism in the contradiction later experienced by the Russians-of
incurring the disability of imposing the hardships that as yet appear to be an
inseparable part of the industrialization process. On the simple theory of
Section I of the Manifesto communist rule arrives just at the time when it
can garner the fruits of the process of industrialization rather than suffer the
agonies of its creation. Capitalism shared with the apple the tendency for the
ripest to fall first. That certain material prerequisites have to be met before
socialist revolution is feasible is a recurrent, but not consistent, theme in Marx
and Engelss writings. I n the German Zdeofogy they noted that
i t is possible to achieve real liberation only in the real world and by real means, that
slavery cannot be abolished without the steam-engine and the mule jenny, serfdom
cannot be abolished without improved agriculture, and that, in general, people cannot
be liberated as long as they are unable to obtain food and drink, housing and clothing
in adequate quality and quantity. Liberation is a historical and not a mental act, and i t
is brought about by historical conditions, the level of industry, commerce, agri ~ul t ure. ~~
46 Introduction (1892) to Socialism: Utopian and Scientific in MESW, Vol. 2, pp. 102-3.
48 MECW, Vol. 5, p. 38, and see p. 54.
MECW, Vol. 6, p. 493.
MI CHAEL L E VI N 547
A similar approach is implicit in Engelss later statement that the bourgeoisie,
therefore, in this respect also is just as necessary a precondition of the socialist
revolution as the proletariat itself.49
Further, the weakness of the liberal ideological heritage lessens the
likelihood of the participatory demands that communism is designed to
accommodate. I n a sense the vision of communism is that of an antithesis to
liberalism-the meeting of the expectations i t creates but is unable to fulfil, the
deliverance of its false promises. I t assumes that liberal demands have been
made but not met-that the liberal experience has been gone through and
found wanting. I t is in this area that we come to one of the basic factors of
German political culture. The concept of the citizen as an active participant in
the affairs of his state was a key component of the political thought of the late
eighteenth century. I t is with figures such as Rousseau, Paine and J efferson
that such notions are associated. (The first two proudly adopted the title of
Citizen.) Alongside this emphasis on meaningful citizenship and a community
of the politically aware and active, there developed a whole civil rights
tradition that viewed the state as an object of suspicion rather than
glorification, and so sought constitutional safeguards against it rather than
integration within i t. The individual rights of liberalism explicitly included the
right to express different opinions, to oppose either in speech, through the
press or, as a last resort, by force of arms (as i n the American Declaration of
Independence). Classical liberalism thereby articulated an opposition to the
whole mentality of the Obrigkeitsstaut. The weakness of this emphasis
underlies the tradition of the unpolitical German and helps explain crucial
areas of German politics in our own century. In Germany the middle classes
did not develop an ideology of independence and opposition to the state
because they experienced a relatively high level of integration within it-as
officials and teachers and through state-guided and protected industrialization.
The status of the military was such that its ethic of obedience to orders
pervaded wider areas of society, for whom the liberal virtues of pluralism and
free speech came to appear as inappropriate as they were for the military itself.
Opposition was not so much integrated as exported. Thus Germany
maintained into the twentieth century an attitude toward political parties-the
association of sectional interest and political opposition with faction,
selfishness or treason-that in Britain had been a characteristic of eighteenth-
century politics.
T H E T I MI DI T Y OF T H E B OU R GE OI S I E
The previously suspected weaknesses of the German bourgeoisie were, for
Marx and Engels, fully confirmed by the dismal performance of the Frankfurt
parliament and failure of the 1848 uprisings. Unification from below-a
central aspect of their strategy-had not occurred. Anger was the initial
response: History presents no more shameful and pitiful spectacle than that of
the German bour ge~i s i e . ~~ In a series of works in the early 1850s Marx and
J9 On Social Relations in Russia. 1875 in MESW. Vol. 2, p. 50.
lo MECW, Vol. 7 (London, Lawrence and Wishart. 1977), p. 504
548 MARX, ENGELS, A N D THE GERMAN QUESTI ON
Engels developed a comprehensive theory of the weaknesses of the German
bourgeoisie in which its main features were its belated historical emergence and
consequent possibility of political influence only at a time when it also had to
contend with the proletariat below as well as the aristocracy above.
The source of Germanys divergence from the Western pattern could be
traced at least as far back as the peasant wars of the sixteenth century. These
had, in short, been won by the wrong side-the princes. They had maintained
and even furthered their predominance whereas their opponents, the clergy,
the aristocracy, and the town interests, had lost out. Engels saw this as a clear
contrast to the English and French situation, where an alliance between the
monarchy and the rising bourgeoisie paved the way for national unification.
The function of absolute monarchy for the bourgeoisie lay in its power to
shatter provincial boundaries and restrictions, thereby facilitating the full
development of internal trade on which the bourgeoisie rely and from which
they grow. The centralization of the state that modern society requires arises
only on the ruins of the military-bureaucratic government machinery which
was forged in opposition to f eudal i ~m. ~~ German backwardness was a
consequence of a situation in which disunity both led to the victory of the
princes and was thereby strengthened by it. Germany had nothing more than
regional centres, with the separate interests of the north and south developing
quite different trading connections and outlets. No single city was in the
situation of becoming the industrial and commercial centre of the whole
country, as, for example, London was for England. 5 2 Engels also referred to a
long period of freedom from foreign invasion, which made the need for unity
appear less strong.53
Germanys disadvantages were further compounded by the devastation and
depopulation of the Thirty Years War, which pushed it backward just at the
time when the modern world market opened up and facilitated the rise of large
scale manufacturing. In a lecture to the London German Workers
Educational Society in November 1847, Engels pointed out that the world
market primarily benefited England and the European Atlantic seaboard
nations. In contrast Italian and German commerce were totally ruined.54
Engels had previously emphasized the extremely late appearance of the
bourgeois class in Germany, attributing its emergence to foreign invasion. The
creator of the German bourgeoisie was Napoleon. Until then there had been
rich shipowners in the Hansa cities and some wealthy bankers further inland
but no class of big capitalists, and least of all of big industrial capitalist^'.^^
But, for all their weaknesses the bourgeoisie still presented the only
conceivable base for a conquest of power.
Engelss account is more discriminating and significantly different from the
more famous general formulation in Part I of the Manifesro: The discovery of
America, the rounding of the Cape, opened up fresh ground for the rising
bourgeoisie . . . gave to commerce, to navigation, to industry, an impulse never
d l MESW, Vol. 1 , p. 340.
dl Marx and Engels, Vber Deurschland und die deursche Arbeirerbewegung (Berlin, Dietz Verlag.
1973). Band 1, p. 191.
5 3 Uber Deurschland und die deursche Arbeirerbewegung, Band 1 , p. 280.
d 4 MECW, Vol. 6, p. 627.
MECW, Vol. 6, p. 80.
MI CHAEL LEVI N 549
before known, and thereby to the revolutionary element in the tottering feudal
society, a rapid devel ~pment. ~~ The reference to Germany and Italy in the
same section assumed them to be part of the aforementioned general
development.
Already in 1844 Marx had foreshadowed the problems that beset a class
whose successor has appeared before it has itself achieved emancipation, a
class whose opportunity to imprint its character upon history disappeared
before it had the strength to take i t. In Germany
the very opportunity of a great role has on every occasion passed away before it is to
hand, thus every class, once i t begins the struggle against the class above it, is involved
in the struggle against the class below it. Hence the princes are struggling against the
monarchy, the bureaucrats against the nobility, and the bourgeoisie against them all,
while the proletariat is already beginning to struggle against the bourgeoisie. No sooner
does the middle class dare to think of emancipation from its own standpoint than the
development of the social conditions and the progress of political theory pronounce
that standpoint antiquated or at least probl emati ~. ~~
The events of 1848-9 strengthened the conviction that the full victory of liberal
economic and political ideas could only be gained by a bourgeoisie that sees
opponents above i t; not by one that has enemies on both sides, for then it is
made too aware that the liberties it seeks for itself become socialistic in the
sense that they also aid the emerging working class.
A bourgeoisie in this position has nowhere to turn. Unable to rely on itself
alone i t is torn between a half-hearted radicalism in pursuit of its own
economic interests and subservience to the aristocracy as a means of protection
from the mob. Such is the social background to the vacillation, timidity,
treachery and cowardice that Marx and Engels observed in the German middle
classes. Why press boldly forward when
in case of victory, were they not sure to be immediately turned out of office, and to see
their entire policy subverted by the victorious proletarians who formed the main body
of their fighting army? Thus placed between opposing dangers which surrounded them
on every side, the petty bourgeoisie knew not to turn its power to any other account
than to let everything take its chance.SR
Looking back on the 1848 revolutions Engels later noted how
The German bourgeoisie, instead of conquering by virtue of its own power, conquered
in the tow of a French workers revolution,, . Terrified not by what the German
proletariat was, but by what it threatened to become and what the French proletariat
already was, the bourgeoisie saw its sole salvation in some compromise, even the most
cowardly, with monarchy and nobility.sg
The consequence of this was that political Liberalism, the rule of the
bourgeoisie, be i t under a Monarchical or Republican form of government, is
forever impossible in Germany.60
5 6 MECW, Vol. 6, p. 485.
s 8 F. Engels, Cerniany: Revolurion and Counrer-Revolurion (London, Lawrence and Wishart,
s Q MESW, Vol. 2. pp. 329, 330. Marx had also suspected the French bourgeoisie of accepting
6o Engels, Germany: Revolution and Counter-Revolurion. p. 1 12.
MECW, Vol. 3. pp. 185-6.
1969). p. 105.
political nullity in return for economic security. See MESW. Vol. I , pp. 288, 319.
550 MARX, ENGELS, A N D THE GERMAN QUESTI ON
THE RISE OF THE PROLETARI AT
In this situation the torch of progress necessarily passes to the class that
remains unequivocally radical. As E. H. Carr has put it: Once bourgeois
democracy was recognised as a stepping-stone to socialism, it could be brought
into being only by those who believed also in socialism.61 Thus it is to the
further analysis of the German working class that we must now turn.
After 1850 Marx and Engelss analysis of German socialism contained three
main aspects. (1) The initial response was to stress the immaturity of the
working-class movement and the danger of its being thrust forward
prematurely. In 1850 Marx declared his devotion to a party which would do
best not to assume power just now. The proletariat, if it should come to power,
would not be able to implement proletarian measures immediately, but would
have to produce petty-bourgeois ones. Our party can only become the
government when conditions allow its views to be put into practice.62 At this
point Marx broke unequivocally with the section of the Communist League
supported by Schapper and Willich. They regarded will as more important
than economic development in bringing about a socialist revolution, whereas
Marx was now looking much more predominantly for the economic crisis that
would herald the demise of the capitalist mode of production. Rising
prosperity had been the material basis of the counter-revolution, and while it
lasted the progress of the proletariat would necessarily be slow. We tell the
workers: I f you want to change conditions and make yourselves capable of
government, you will have to undergo fifteen, twenty or fifty years of civil
war.63 Engels, too, pointed out how far the German proletariat lay behind
that of England or France, how modern ideas had hardly penetrated to a class
mainly employed by small tradesmen, and that, in consequence, their
aspirations were often directed backwards to the feudal guild system rather
than forward to industrial unionism.64
(2) A second stage of the evaluation of German socialism consisted of a
strong antipathy to Lassalles influence on the nascent SPD. Lassalleanism, to
Marx and Engels, consisted of subservience to the Prussian state, a
compromise with feudalism, bogus economic theory and the abandonment of
internationalism. Long after his death in a duel (1864) Lassalles theories
continued to vie with Marxs own for dominance within the party. The 1875
Gotha Programme, an attempted reconcilation between the Eisenach and
Lassallean factions, was seen as far too much of a victory for the latter. In
1877 Marx declared that a rotten spirit is making itself felt in our Party in
Germany, not so much among the masses as among the leaders.65 But
however suspect the leadership might be, the class it represented was, thought
6 1 E. H. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1923 (Harmondsworth, Middx., Penguin, 1975),
6z Minutes of the Central Committee Meeting of 15 September 1850 in Karl Marx, The
Revolutions of 1848 (Harmondsworth, Middx., Penguin, 1973), p. 343. Also see Engels letter to J.
Weydemeyer, 12 April 1853, in Marx, Engels, Selected Correspondence, p. 71.
63 Marx, The Revolutions of 1848, p. 341. Also see MECW, Vol. I , pp. 231, 233, 242, and D.
McLellan, Karl Marx. His Lye and Thought (London and Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1973), pp.
25&2.
VOl . I , p. 54.
64 Engels, Germany: Revolution and Counter-Revolution, p. 15.
6 5 Quoted in McLellan, Karl Marx. His Life and Thoughr, p. 434.
MI CHAEL LEVl N 55 I
Engels, the onl y healthy class in Germany, the only class that had avoided the
hereditary German plague of petty-bourgeois and philistine sentiment. Only
the proletariat had given evidence of a free outlook, energy, humour, tenacity
in struggle.66 Economic and political developments were gradually fitting this
class for the task of European leadership.
(3) By the 1870s Germany had emerged from the industrially backward
position that Marx and Engels had lamented nearly a quarter of a century
earlier. In an 1873 preface to the second edition of Cupiful Marx noted that
since 1848 capitalist production has developed rapidly in Germany, and at the
present time i t is in the full bloom of speculation and wind ling'.^' In this vital
aspect, then, Germany no longer lagged so far behind France and England. A
limitation that long held back its working-class movement had now been
overcome. The war of 1870 was seen as a turning-point. Political unification
and economic advance radically altered the German situation just as French
socialism, already beset with a surfeit of Proudhonism, suffered a severe
setback with the defeat of the Paris commune. That Germany finds her unity
at first in the Prussian barracks is a punishment she has amply merited, wrote
Marx in 1870. But, he continued, this war has shifted the centre of gravity of
the working-class movement on the Continent from France to Germany. This
places greater responsibility upon the German working class.68 It also
appeared to present a favourable opportunity for Marxism to become the
dominant mode of European socialism. Writing to Engels in J uly 1870, Marx
declared that
the French need a thrashing. If the Prussians win, the centralisation of the state power
will be useful for the centralisation of the German working class. German
predominance would also transfer the centre of gravity of the workers movements in
western Europe from France to Germany, and one has only to compare the movement
in the two countries from 1866 till now to see that the German working class is superior
to the French both theoretically and organisationally. This predominance over the
French on the world stage would also mean the predominance of our theory over
Proudhons e t ~ . ~ ~
Grounds exist for suspecting Marx and Engels of putting an optimistic gloss
on the situation of any country for whom they were writing. (See, for example,
the Prefaces to the Manifesto translations into Russian and Italian.) Thus one
might explain an apparent partiality for Germany in terms of the context in
which it was expressed. However, this conclusion is not supported by the
evidence. In 1891-2, when the German socialists had just emerged from the
banishment to which Bismarck confined them, Engels informed both the
French and the English that German socialism was at the head of the workers
movement. Socialism in Germany was written at the request of Parisian
socialists and first appeared in French in 1892. In it Engels explained that
now the German Social Democratic Party. thanks to its uninterrupted battles and
sacrifices over a period of thirty years, has attained a position unequalled by any other
socialist party in the world, a position which will, within a short period of time, secure
66 Letter to E. Bernstein, 1883. in Marx, Engels. Srlecterl Corrrspondenc,e. p. 358
6 K. Marx, Capital. Vol. I (Harmondsworth, Middx., Penguin, 1976), p. 96.
6n Marx, Engels. Sel wt ed Correspondence, p. 241.
69 K. Marx and F. Engels. Wrrke (Berlin, Dietz Verlag. 1966). Band 33. p. 5.
552 MARX, ENGELS, A N D THE GERMAN QUESTI ON
for it political power. The German socialists assume the foremost, the most glorious,
the most responsible place in the international workers movement.70
The English received somewhat similar treatment in Engelss 1892 special
introduction to the English edition of Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. The
whole tenor of the introduction shows it to be very deliberately geared to an
English audience. Engels clearly felt the burden of introducing to an English
readership a manner of thinking they would consider alien and continental.
This explains his effort to present materialism as part of the English
philosophical tradition of Bacon, Hobbes, and Locke. (Such a reminder was
possibly felt to be particularly necessary at a time when English educated
opinion was much influenced by the idealism of Bosanquet and Green.) In a
brief account of English historical development we learn that the country with
the most developed capitalist economy had not even had a clear-cut bourgeois
revolution, but only a series of compromises; that the bourgeoisie never held
undisputed sway; that Germany rather than England is in the forefront of the
world socialist movement.
What could be the reasons for this? On grounds of strict historical
materialism one would expect the working-class movement to be most
advanced in the country where capitalism had developed furthest. However,
the reasons for Englands loss of leadership appear to rest on the qualities of
the respective labour movements. The German Social Democrats had just
emerged from banishment to significant electoral advances and the formu-
lation of a Marxist programme at their 1891 Erfurt conference. In contrast, the
English Fabians were-according to Engelss letters of this period-primarily
intent on handing the organized labour movement over to an alliance with the
Liberals and, at all cost, avoiding class conflict. German superiority was
significantly demonstrated by the very existence of its own workers party. In
contrast, the French had mere factions and the English were dependent
primarily on trade unionism, co-operatives, utopian projects and philanthropy.
Engels closes his introduction to the English edition of Socialism: Utopian
and Scientific as follows :
But the triumph of the European working class does not depend upon England alone. I t
can only be secured by the co-operation of, at least, England, France, and Germany. In
both the latter countries the working class movement is well ahead of England. In
Germany it is even within measurable distance of success. The progress is has there
made during the last twenty-five years is unparalleled. I t advances with ever-increasing
velocity. If the German middle-class have shown themselves lamentably deficient in
political capacity, discipline, courage, energy and perseverance, the German working
class have given ample proof of all these qualities. Four hundred years ago, Germany
was the starting-point of the first upheaval of the European middle class; as things now
are, is it outside the limits of possibility that Germany will be the scene, too, of the first
great victory of the European proletariat?7
II F. Engels, Der Sozialismus in Deutschland, Werke (Berlin, Diem Verlag, 1970), Band 22, p.
255. In his 1891 introduction to Marxs The Civil War in France Engels referred to German
scientific socialism (MESW, Vol. 1, p. 481).
I MESW, Vol. 2, p. 115. Also see MESW, Vol. I , pp. 640-54.
MI CHAEL LEVl N 553
CONCLUS I ON
By way of conclusion one should emphasize the major contribution that
Marx and Engels made to the German Sonderenrwicklung literature. Theirs
was the first significant analysis to locate Germanys peculiarity in terms of its
social structure, and also inaugurated a line of enquiry echoed in significant
and influential writings down to our own day-in the works of, for example,
Mehring, Lukacs, Marcuse and Kiihn1,72 not to mention numerous others who
would be embarrassed by the association.
In terms of our own century, it will be evident that the theory of Germanys
leap forward to socialism has an obvious relevance to Bolshevism, just as
Germanys weak liberal tradition was one of the many factors facilitating the
rise of Nazism. Both these aspects, however, require more extended treatment
than can be offered here.
For both Marx and Engels Germany remained a special concern. Fifty years
after he first came to England Engels could still refer to the German Social
Democrats as our part^'.'^So, to the extent that they saw Germany as the
major hope for advance to socialism, Marx and Engels can-surprisingly, and
in rather a deviant manner-be related to the long tradition of German
nationalist thought.
The relative significance of various statements by Marx and Engels must at
least partially depend on the status attributed to the works from which they are
taken. The present discussion assumes that the MuniJesto occupies a major
place in the corpus of their writings and notes that throughout their lives they
referred to the Munijesro in the warmest terms, regarding it as the first
comprehensive statement of their position. 74
I t must be clear that in a number of ways Marx and Engels were less
dogmatic than is often thought. We have noted that change need not be
determined solely by internal economic and social factors. Chance, coincidence
and geographical position can also play a part. Proximity to the Atlantic was
mentioned as a factor favouring the rise of the bourgeoisie and lack of foreign
invasion as a hindrance. Also, the path of historical development is evidently
less straightforward than some of the shorter summaries (most obviously the
1859 Preface) appear to suggest. Helmut Fleischer has noted that what he calls
Marxs homological approach is more evident in short summaries, prefaces,
and postscripts, and that in more detailed studies axiomatic deduction from
laws retreats behind complex description. Fleischer thus tries to read-out or
dismiss the former as a tendency to rhetorical flourish or figure of speech,75
both of which distort what Marxism is really about. This approach might yield
consistency but to deny the actuality of ambiguity and contradiction is an
improper distortion of the facts and, in this instance, submerges the very real
2 F. Mehring, Ahsolurism mid Rivolurion in Gerniuns 152/-1848 (London. New Park
Publications, 1975): G. Lukacs, Die Zersthwng der beniurz/i (Darmstadt und Neuwied,
Luchterhand Verlag, 1973). Band I . Ch. I ; H. Marcuse, Reason urtd Rrvolurion (London.
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969); R. Kiihnl. Formen Burgerlicher Herrsc,bu/i : Li berdi snt us-
Faschismus (Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1976).
See, for example. Marx and Engels, Werke, Band 22, pp. 243, 249: we in Germany in
MESW, Vol. I , p. 473; McLellan. Kurl M a n . His Li f b and Thought, p. 430.
4 Blackburn, Marxism: Theory of Proletarian Revolution, p. 13.
7 5 H. Fleischer, Mur xi sni and Hi sr or y (New York. Harper and Row, 1969), pp. 36, 35.
554 MARX, ENGELS, A N D T HE GERMAN QUESTI ON
basis for the positivist Marxism of the Second International. A too assertive
reduction of variety to whatever type of dogmatic uniformity might have its
political justifications but is of little service to real understanding. Marxism
certainly cannot be whatever we care to make it, but on certain themes there is
a duality of attitudes that it would be misleading not to acknowledge. In this
enquiry we have seen how Marx and Engels's particular investigations of
German development pose difficult problems concerning compatibility with
their general theory of history. This duality cannot be overcome or integrated
into one consistent pattern. Michael Evans has noted that
the Manifesto version of what a normal development constituted had been effectively
discarded both by the changes Marx made to his economic theory and by his
recognition of the various changes in political circumstances which followed in the
wake of the failure of the 1848 revolutions. No coherent political theory was put
forward to cope with the new phenomena. Indeed, both Marx and Engels continued to
refer to the Manifesto as the classic outline of their political strategy.. . in fact the
ambiguities of Marx's position mean that there will always be competing orthodoxies of
interpretation.76
'' M. Evans, Karl Marx (London, 1975), p. 168.