REVOLUTION
AND
COUNTER-
REVOLUTION
IN GERMANY

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  ^[1] In his work Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany Engels summed up the experience of the German Revolution of 1848-49. From the historical-materialist viewpoint he gave a profound analysis of the preconditions, character and motive force of the revolution, as well as the major stages of its development and the attitudes of different classes and political parties. He developed the tactical principles of the proletarian revolutionary struggle and elaborated basic Marxist teachings on armed insurrection.
    In early August 1851, Charles Dana, an editor of the bourgeois newspaper New York Daily Tribune, asked Marx to write for it. This was the origin of the work. Marx, then busy with economic research, asked Engels to write some articles on the German Revolution. In doing so, Engels drew on the annual collections of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung for his main materials. These were supplemented by Marx, with whom Engels constantly consulted, and who read the articles before they were sent off. So Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany first appeared from October 25, 1851 to October 23, 1852 as a series in the New York Daily Tribune over Marx's signature. Only in 1913, upon the publication of the correspondence between Marx and Engels, did it become known that it had been written by Engels. During Marx's and Engels' lifetimes, the work was not reprinted. It was published as a separate book in English in 1896, in an edition prepared by Marx's daughter Eleanor Marx-Aveling. A German translation came out the same year, followed in 1900 by the French translation by Marx's daughter Laura Lafargue.

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    The New York Daily Tribune ran the articles without subheadings; the present ones were provided by Eleanor Marx-Aveling in the English edition of 1896.    [p.title page]

  ^[2] In partibus infidelium -- literally in parts inhabited by unbelievers. The words are added to the title of Roman Catholic bishops appointed to purely nominal dioceses in non-Christian countries. Marx and Engels frequently used this expression to describe émigré governments formed abroad in disregard of the actual situation in their own countries.    [p.3]

  ^[3] The Tribune -- short for the American newspaper New York Daily Tribune, published from 1841 to 1924. Founded by the prominent American journalist and political figure Horace Greeley, it was the organ of the Left wing of the American Whigs until the middle 1850s, and later of the Republicans. In the 1840s and 1850s it took a progressive stand against slavery. A number of prominent American writers and journalists worked for it. Charles Dana, who was strongly influenced by utopian socialism, became an editor in the late 1840s. Marx was a contributor from August 1851 to March 1862. At Marx's request, many of the articles he sent to the paper were written by Engels, mostly in Manchester. They were dated not by the time of writing, but by the time of their dispatch to New York, as was Marx's habit. Some were written in London but date-lined Paris, Vienna or Berlin. In their writings for the New York Daily Tribune, Marx and Engels dealt with important issues of international politics, the working-class movement, the economic development of the European countries, colonial expansion and the national-liberation movement in the oppressed and dependent countries. During the period of reaction in Europe, they made use of this widely-circulated American paper to expose with concrete data the evils of capitalist society and the irreconcilable contradictions inherent in it, and to make clear the limitations of bourgeois democracy.
    The Tribune editors often took considerable liberties with these articles, publishing many of them unsigned in the form of editorials. After the middle of 1855, all contributions by Marx and Engels were published unsigned. There were also cases when the editors arbitrarily tampered with their text or the dating, despite Marx's repeated protests. In the autumn of 1857, during the economic crisis in the United States which affected the newspaper financially, the editors asked Marx to reduce the number of his articles. At the beginning of the American Civil War Marx stopped contributing to the Tribune. He broke with

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it largely because of the growing influence on its editorial board of the advocates of compromise with the slave-owning South, and its departure from its former progressive stand. Later the paper swung further to the Right.    [p.5]

  ^[4] The Continental System, or the Continental Blockade, proclaimed by Napoleon I in 1806, prohibited trade between the Continental European countries and Britain.    [p.7]

  ^[5] The Protective Tariff of 1818 abolished internal duties on the Prussian territory, and thereby created the condition for the Zollverein.
    The Zollverein (Customs Union ) of German states, which established a commom customs frontier, was formed in 1834 under Prussian hegemony. Later the union embraced most German states apart from Austria and some small ones. Brought into being by the necessity for a common German market, it promoted Germany's subsequent political unification.    [p.8]

  ^[6] This refers to the Silesian weavers' insurrection on June 4-6, 1844 -- the first big class battle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie in Germany -- and the uprising of the Czech workers in the latter half of June 1844. Both were ruthlessly suppressed by government troops.    [p.12]

  ^[7] The German Confederation was formed at the Congress of Vienna on June 8, 1815. It consisted of thirty-six states each keeping its individual feudal absolutism. Hence it aggravated the fragmentation of Germany politically and economically, and obstructed the country's further development.
    The Federal Diet -- the central organ of the German Confederation. It held its sessions in Frankfort on the Main, and consisted of representatives of the German states, with the Prussian representative as its president. The Diet did not function as the central authority, but was able to play a counter-revolutionary role. It intervened in the internal affairs of the German states for the sole purpose of suppressing the revolutionary movements there. In the period of the Prussian-Austrian War of 1866, both the Federal Diet and the German Confederation went out of existence.    [p.14]

  ^[8] This refers to the so-called Customs Union (Steuerverein ), formed in May 1834; it included the German states of Hanover, Brunswick, Oldenburg and Schaumburg-Lippe, which were interested in trade with England. By 1854, this separatist union disintegrated and its participants joined the Zollverein.    [p.14]

  ^[9] The Congress of Vienna -- held in 1814-15. There Austria, England

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and tsarist Russia, which headed European reaction, re-carved the map of Europe with a view to restoring legitimist monarchies in disregard of the interests of the national unification and independence of the peoples.    [p.15]

  ^[10] This refers to the July 1830 revolution in France which was followed by uprisings in a number of European countries: Belgium, Poland, Germany and Italy.    [p.16]

  ^[11] Young Germany (Junge Deutschland ) -- a literary group that arose in Germany in the 1830s and was under the influence of Heinrich Heine and Ludwig Börne. The writings of its members (Gutzkow, Wienbarg, Mundt and others) expressed the opposition sentiments of the petty bourgeoisie who advocated freedom of belief and of the press. Ideological immaturity and political indecision characterized their views, and soon many of them degenerated into ordinary bourgeois liberals.    [p.17]

  ^[12] G. W. F. Hegel, Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts (Outlines of the Philosophy of Law ), Berlin, 1821.    [p.17]

  ^[13] The Holy Alliance -- a reactionary association of European monarchs founded in 1815 by tsarist Russia, Austria and Prussia to suppress revolutionary movements in different countries and to preserve the feudal monarchies there.    [p.19]

  ^[14] The reference is to the Berliner politisches Wochenblatt, an extremely reactionary periodical published in 1831-41 with the participation of representatives of the Historical School of Law (see Note 15). It was under the patronage of Prince Frederick William, who ascended to the Prussian throne as Frederick William IV in 1840.    [p.20]

  ^[15] The Historical School of Law -- a reactionary trend in German historiography and jurisprudence in the late eighteenth century. With Gustav Hugo, Friedrich Karl Savigny and others as its prominent representatives, this school opposed the bourgeois-democratic ideas of the French bourgeois revolution. For a characterization of this school see Marx's "The Philosophical Manifesto of the Historical School of Law" (1842).    [p.20]

  ^[16] The Legitimists -- supporters of the elder line of the Bourbon dynasty of France which represented the interests of the big landowning aristocracy and was overthrown in 1792. They formed the Legitimist Party in 1830, after the second overthrow of the Bourbons. When struggling against the reigning Orleans dynasty (1830-48), which relied on the financial aristocracy and the big bourgeoisie, a section of the Legitimists

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resorted to social demagogy and presented themselves as defenders of the working people against exploitation by the bourgeoisie.    [p.20]

  ^[17] The Rhenish Gazette -- short for the Rhenish Gazette for Politics, Trade and Industry (Rheinische Zeitung für Politik, Handel und Gewerbe ) -- a daily published in Cologne from January 1, 1842 to March 31, 1843. It was founded by Members of the bourgeoisie in the Rhine Province who were opposed to Prussian absolutism. Marx became a contributor in April 1842 and chief editor the following October. Its revolutionary and democratic character became more pronounced under Marx's editorship. The government established an especially strict censorship over the paper and subsequently closed it down.    [p.22]

  ^[18] Seehandlung -- short for "Preussische Seehandlungsgesellschaft" (Prussian Overseas Trading Company) which was founded as a commercial and credit society in Prussia in 1772 and endowed by the state with a number of important privileges. It advanced big loans to the government, for which it in fact acted as banker and broker, and in 1904 officially became the Prussian State Bank.    [p.23]

  ^[19] An allusion to German "true socialism," a reactionary trend which in the 1840s was spreading primarily among German petty-bourgeois intellectuals. Its representatives were Karl Grun, Moses Hess, Hermann Kriege and others who substituted sentimental preaching of love and brotherhood for socialist ideas and denied the necessity of bourgeois democratic revolution in Germany. Marx and Engels criticized this ideological trend in their works: "The German Ideology" (1845-46), "Circular Against Kriege" (1846), "German Socialism in Verse and Prose" (1846-47) and "Manifesto of the Communist Party" (1847-48).    [p.26]

  ^[20] German Catholicism -- a religious movement that arose in a number of German states in 1844 and embraced a considerable section of the middle and petty bourgeoisie. It was directed against extreme manifestations of mysticism and hypocrisy in the Catholic Church. Rejecting the supremacy of the Pope and many of the ecclesiastical dogmas and rites, this trend sought to adapt Catholicism to the needs of the German bourgcoisie.
    Free Congregations were religious organizations that split away from the official Protestant Church in 1846, under the influence of the "Friends of Light" -- a religious trend directed against the pietism predominant in the official church which was distinguished by its extreme mysticism and hypocrisy. The "Friends of Light" movement was an expression of German bourgeois discontent with the reactionary order in Germany

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in the 1840s. In 1859 the Free Congregations merged with the German Catholics.    [p.30]

  ^[21] The Uniterians, or anti-Trinitarians, were representatives of a religious trend that rejects the dogma of the "Holy Trinity." The Unitarian Church, which arose in the course of the Reformation in the sixteenth century, expressed the struggle of the masses and radical bourgeoisie against the feudal system and the feudal church. Unitarianism spread to England and the United States in the seventeenth century. The nineteenth-century Unitarian doctrine emphasized the moral and ethical side of Christianity in contrast to its external ritualist aspect.    [p.31]

  ^[22] Napoleon's victory over Germany led to the break-down of the so-called Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. In August 1806, Francis I, King of Austria, renounced his title of Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. Founded in the tenth century, this Empire was not a centralized state, but an association of feudal principalities and free cities that recognized the supreme power of the emperor.    [p.32]

  ^[23] "A German Republic, one and indivisible " -- a slogan advanced by Marx and Engels when the revolution was in the offing (see Marx, "Moralizing Criticism and Critical Morality," written in 1847). In March 1848 it was included as the first point in the "Demands of the Communist Party in Germany" -- the political programme of the Communist League in the German Revolution drawn up by Marx and Engels (see above, pp. 180-81).    [p.33]

  ^[24] This refers to the first Opium War of 1840-42, a predatory war waged by Britain against China, which then began to be reduced to the status of a semi-colony. At the end of the war China was compelled to sign the Treaty of Nanking, which laid her open to the imperialist forces of aggression.    [p.35]

  ^[25] In February-March 1846, simultaneously with the national-liberation in surrection in Cracow, a big peasant uprising flared up in Galicia. Making use of class contradictions, the Austrian authorities stirred up a conflict between the insurgent Galician peasantry and the minor Polish nobility which was attempting to support the Cracow insurrection. The peasant uprising, which arose from the disarming of the insurgent forces of the minor Polish nobility, demolished landlord estates on a large scale. After putting down the insurgent movement of the minor Polish nobles, the Austrian Government also suppressed the Galician peasant uprising.    [p.36]

  ^[26] This refers to the national-liberation war waged in 1848-49 by the Italian people against Austrian rule. The war broke out in March 1848 after the

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victory of the people's uprising in Lombardy and Venice, then ruled by Austria. Under pressure from the masses, the monarchies of Italy, with Piedmont at their head, also joined in the war against Austria. The treachery of the Italian ruling classes, who feared the revolutionary unification of Italy, led to defeat in this war.    [p.47]

  ^[27] Quoted from Heinrich Heine, Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen, Kaput VII (Germany, a Winter's Tale, Part VII).    [p.61]

  ^[28] This refers to the armistice in the Schleswig-Holstein war, concluded between Denmark and Prussia on August 26, 1848. The war against Danish rule, beginning with the insurrection in Schleswig-Holstein, became an integral part of the German people's revolutionary struggle for national unification. Under pressure from the masses, all the governments of the German states including Prussia were compelled to join in the war. But the Prussian ruling clique actually sabotaged the war, and finally in August 1848 concluded a shameful armistice with Denmark in Malmoe, Sweden. In September 1848 the National Assembly in Frankfort on the Main approved the armistice. This led to a storm of protest and the people's uprising in Frankfort on the Main. In the spring of 1849, the Scbleswig-Holstein war was resumed, but in July 1850 Prussia signed a peace treaty with Denmark enabling the latter to put down the insurgents.    [p.62]

  ^[29] Wars of the Hussites -- national-liberation war of the Czech people waged against the German feudal lords and the Catholic Church in 1419-34. It took its name from Jan Hus (1369-1415), the great patriot and leader of the Czech religious Reformation. During the war, the Hussite army, with the peasants and common people as its main force, repulsed five crusades organized by the Catholic clergy and the German Emperor. However, owing to the treacherous compromise of the Czech nobility and burghers with the foreign reactionary feudal forces, the people's insurrection ended in failure. But the Hussite movement was to exert a tremendous influence on the European Reformation in the sixteenth century.    [p.67]

  ^[30] The Slavonic Congress was held in Prague on June 2, 1848. It was marked by struggle between the two factions in the national movement of the Slav peoples oppressed by the Hapsburg dynasty. The moderate liberal Right (which included Palacky and Safarik, leaders of the congress) attempted to solve the national question by defending and strengthening the Hapsburg regime. The democratic Left (Sabina, Fric, Libelt and others) was firmly against this and insisted on united action with the German and Hungarian revolutionary democratic forces. The

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delegates who belonged to the radical faction and took an active part in the Prague uprising of June 1848 were subjected to ruthless persecution. On June 16, the remainder of lhe delegates, namely, the moderate liberals, adjourned the congress for an indefinite period.    [p.71]

  ^[31] See Heinrich Heine, Zeitgedicht, "Bei des Nachtwächters Ankunft zu Paris." (Topical Poems, "The Night Watchers' Arrival in Paris.")    [p.73]

  ^[32] The mass demonstration in London, called by the Chartists for April 10, 1848, to present a third petition to Parliament for the adoption of the People's Charter. The government forbade the demonstration, and massed a large military and police force in London to check it. The Chartist leaders, many of whom were vacillating, decided to give up the demonstration and persuade its participants to disperse, thus bringing about its failure. The reactionaries took advantage of this to launch an onslaught on the workers and initiate repressions against the Chartists.    [p.75]

  ^[33] On April 16, 1848, the workers of Paris demonstrated peacefully to present a petition on "labour organization" and "abolition of exploitation of man by man" to the Provisional Government of France. The demonstration was dispersed by the bourgeois National Guard mobilized purely for this purpose.
    The revolutionary attempt of the people of Paris on May 15, 1848 was made under the slogans of further advancing the revolution and supporting the revolutionary movements in Italy, Germany and Poland. The workers headed by Auguste Blanqui played the leading role in this movement. The demonstrators burst into the hall of the Constituent Assembly, then in session, demanding that it keep its promise to give bread and work to the workers and establish a Ministry of Labour; they declared the Assembly dissolved and formed a revolutionary government. But the movement was suppressed and its leaders Blanqui, Barbes, Albert, Raspail and others were arrested. The Provisional Government then took a series of measures to abolish the "national workshops," enforced a law banning street meetings and closed many democratic clubs.    [p.75]

  ^[34] On May 15, 1848, Ferdinand II of the Two Sicilies (nicknamed King Bomba for his bombardment of Messina in January 1848) suppressed a popular insurrection, disbanded the National Guard, dissolved Parliament and abolished the reforms that had been introduced under pressure from the masses in February 1848.    [p.75]

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  ^[35] The Press Law refers to the Provisional Regulations Respecting the Press, issued by the Austrian Government on April 1, 1848, which provided for the posting of large sums of money as security before a newspaper was permitted to publish. Since censorship and the system by which offenders against the press law were tried by the administrative court (not by jury) were still in force, the government officials were in a position to forbid the publication of any work.
    The aristocratic constitution refers to the Austrian Constitution of April 25, 1848, which imposed rigid property and residential qualifications for candidates in the Imperial Diet elections. It instituted two chambers -- the Lower Chamber and the Senate, preserved the provincial estate representative bodies and gave the emperor executive power, the right of commanding over the military forces and the right to reject laws passed by the chambebs.
    The Electoral Law of May 11, 1848 deprived workers, day labourers and servants of voting rights. Some senators were appointed by the emperor, others were chosen on the basis of the two-stage elections from among persons paying the highest taxes. Elections to the Lower Chamber were also held in two stages.    [p.82]

  ^[36] Free traders -- supporters of free trade and non-intervention by the state in the economy. In England the centre of propaganda of the free traders was Manchester, where the so-called Manchester School, a trend of economic thought reflecting the interests of the English industrial bourgeoisie, took shape. This trend was led by Richard Cobden and John Bright, two cotton manufacturers who organized in 1838 the Anti-Corn Law League. In the 1840s and 1850s the free traders constituted a special political grouping which later joined the Liberal Party.    [p.94]

  ^[37] On August 13, 1849, at Vilagos, the Hungarian army commanded by Görgey who betrayed the cause of revolution surrendered to the tsarist Russian troops sent to Hungary to put down the insurrection, against Austrian rule.    [p.94]

  ^[38] Neue Rheinische Zeitung (New Rhine Gazette ) -- a daily published in Cologne from June 1, 1848 to May 19, 1849, which was the militant organ of the proletarian wing of the democratic movement. Marx was its editor-in-chief; Marx and Engels wrote leading articles which determined its attitucle to the principal problems of the revolution in Germany and Europe. After the defeat of the German Revolution, the paper ceased publication. Lenin said that the Neue Rheinische Zeitung "to this very day remains the best and the unsurpassed organ of the

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revolutionary proletariat." (V. I. Lenin, Karl Marx, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1974, p. 50.)    [p.95]

  ^[39] Lancastrian schools -- primary schools for poor children in which the monitorial system of mutual instruction was employed. Under this system the elder and more advanced pupils helped the others in study to make up for the shortage of teachers. In the first half of the nineteenth century, Lancastrian schools spread widely in England and some other countries. The system was called after Joseph Lancaster (1778-1838), an English educator.    [p.97]

  ^[40] In 1636, John Hampden, later a prominent figure in the English bourgeois revolution of the seventeenth century, refused to pay "ship money," a tax which was levied by the king without the consent of the House of Commons. The trial of Hampden fanned up opposition to absolutism in English society.    [p.102]

  ^[41] The refusal of the Americans to pay the stamp-tax introduced by the British Government in its colonies was a prologue to the American War of Independence (1775-83). In 1766, as a result of protests, the British Parliament was forced to cancel the stamp-tax introduced the previous year. Later, the Americans declared a boycott against all British goods on which indirect taxes were imposed. In 1773, an attempt forcibly to levy high taxes on tea imported into America was broken when the first cargo of tea was dumped in the sea by the patriots in the port of Boston. All these conflicts sharpened the disputes and hastened the American uprising against British rule.    [p.102]

  ^[42] Vendée is a department on the west coast of France. In 1793 it was the scene of counter-revolutionary revolts instigated by the royalists, who sought to turn the peasants' struggle against the Republic.    [p.109]

  ^[43] On March 21, 1848, a pompous royal appearance was staged in Berlin, on the initiative of Prussian bourgeois ministers trying to restore the authority of the king. It was accompanied by manifestations in favour of Germany's unification. King Frederick William IV drove along the streets wearing a black-red-gold armband -- a symbol of united Germany -- and delivered a pseudo-patriotic speech, presenting himself as a defender of "German liberty and unification."    [p.118]

  ^[44] On May 17, 1849 a conference, attended by Prussia, Saxony, Hanover, Bavaria and Wurttemberg, was convened for the purpose of revising the so-called Imperial Constitution drawn up by the National Assembly at Frankfort on the Main. At the close of the conference on May 26,

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1849 an agreement (the "Union of Three Kings") was concluded between the kings of Prussia, Saxony and Hanover. By August 1849, twenty-nine German states had joined in the agreement. Under its terms, the Imperial Constitution was revised in conformity with the interests of the monarchy, and the king of Prussia was to serve as Regent and parliament to consist of two chambers. This "Union" was an attempt of the Prussian monarchy to gain hegemony in Germany. But under Austrian and Russian pressure Prussia was forced to beat a retreat, and in November 1850 to withdraw from the "Union."    [p.123]

  ^[45] St. Paul's Church in Frankfort on the Main was where the All-German National Assembly held its sessions from May 18, 1848 to May 30, 1849.    [p.140]

  ^[46] The "next letter" mentioned here, if it was ever written, did not appear in the New York Daily Tribune. The English (1896) edition of Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany and a number of later ones appended Engels' "The Late Trial at Cologne," which was not part of the series, as the last article.    [p.145]