Articles by Karl Marx in Rheinische Zeitung, 1842
Communism and the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung [77]
October 16, 1842
Cologne, October 13 -- Issue No.284 of the Augsburg paper is so
inept as to find the Rheinische Zeitung to be a Prussian communist
-- not a communist, to be sure, but still one that fanatically flirts with
and platonically ogles communism.
Whether this ill-mannered fantasy of the Augsburger is unselfish or
whether this idle trick of its excited imagination is connected with speculation
and diplomatic affairs, the reader may decide -- after we have presented
the alleged corpus delicti.
The Rheinische Zeitung, they say, has printed a communistic essay
on Berlin family dwellings, accompanied by the following comment: This
report "might not be without interest for the history of this important
issue". From this it follows, according to the Augsburger's logic, that
the Rheinische Zeitung "served up such dirty linen with approval".
Thus, for example, if I say: "The following report from [Leipzig journal]
Mefistofeles about the household affairs of the Augsburg paper might
not be without interest for the history of this pretentious lady," do I
thereby recommend dirty "material" from which the Augsburg lady could tailor
a colorful wardrobe? Or should we not consider communism an important current
issue because it's not a current issue privileged to appear at court, since
it wears dirty linen and does not smell of rosewater?
But the Augsburg paper has reason to be angry at our misunderstanding.
The importance of communism does not lie in its being a current issue of
highest moment for France and England. Communism has "European significance",
to repeat the phrase used by the Augsburg paper. One of its Paris correspondents,
a convert who treats history the way a pastry cook treats botony, has recently
had the notion that monarchy, in its own fashion, must seek to appropriate
socialist-communist ideas. Now you will understand the displeasure of the
Augsburg paper, which will never forgive us for revealing communism to
the public in its unwashed nakedness; now you understand the sullen irony
that tells us: So you recommend communism, which once had the fortunate
elegance of being a phrase in the Augsburg paper!
The second reproach to the Rheinische Zeitung deals with the
conclusion of a report on the communist speeches given at the congress
in Strasbourg, because the two stepsister papers had so divided the booty
that the Rhineland sister took the proceedings and the Bavarian one the
fruits of the Strasbourg scholars. The exact wording of the incriminating
passage is:
"It is with the middle class today as it was with the nobility in 1789.
At that time, the middle class claimed the privileges of the nobility and
got them; today, the class which possesses nothing demands to share in
the wealth of the middle classes that are now in control. Today, however,
the middle class is better prepared for a surprise attack than the nobility
was in 1789, and it is to be expected that the problem will be solved peacefully."
That Sieyes' prophecy has come true and that the tiers etat ["Third
Estate"] has become everything and wants to be everything -- all this is
recognized with the most sorrowful indignation by Bulow-Cummerow, by the
former Berliner Politische Wochenblatt [Berlin Political Weekly],
by Dr. Kosegarten, and by all the feudalistic writers. That the class that
today possesses nothing demands to share in the wealth of the middle class
is a fact that, without the Strasbourg speeches and the silence of the
Augsburg paper, is clearly recognized in the streets of Manchester, Paris,
and Lyon. Does the Augsburger really believe that indignation and silence
refute the facts of the time? The Augsburger is impertinent in fleeing.
The Augsburg paper runs away from captious issues and believes that the
dust it stirs up, and the nervous invectives it mutters in its flight,
will blind and confuse the uncomfortable issue as well as the comfortable
reader.
Or is the Augsburger angry at our correspondent's expectation that the
undeniable collision will be solved in a "peaceful way"? Or does the Augsburger
reproach us for not having given immediately a good prescription and not
having put into the surprised reader's pocket a report as clear as daylight
on the solution of the enormous problem? We do not possess the art of mastering
problems which two nations are working on with one phrase.
But, my dear, best Augsburger! In connection with communism, you give
us to understand that Germany is now poor in independent people, that nine-tenths
of the better educated youth are begging the state for their future bread,
that our rivers are neglected, that shipping has declined, that our once-flourishing
commercial cities have faded, that in Prussia very slow progress is made
toward free institutions, that the surplus of our population helplessly
wanders away and ceases to be German among foreign nations -- and for all
these problem there is not a single prescription, no attempt to become
"clearer about the means of achieving the great act that is to redeem us
from all these sins! Or don't you expect a peaceful solution? It almost
seems that another article in the same issue, date-lined from Karlsruhe,
points in that direction when you pose for Prussia the insidious question
of the Customs Union: "Does anyone believe that such a crisis would pass
like a brawl over smoking in the Tiergarten?" The reason you off your disbelief
is communistic: "Let a crisis break out in industry; let millions
in capital be lost; let thousands of workers go hungry." How inopportune
our "peaceful expectation", after you had decided to let a bloody revolution
break out! Perhaps, for this reason, your article on Great Britain by your
own logic points approvingly to the demagogic physician, Dr. M'Douall,
who emigrated to America because "nothing can be done with this royal family
after all."
Before we part from you, we would, in passing, like to call your
attention to your own wisdom -- your method which, with no shortage of
phrases but without even a harmless idea here and there, makes you nevertheless
speak up. You find that the polemic of Mr. Hennequin in Paris against
the parceling out of the land puts him in surprising harmony with the Autonomes
[aristocratic landowners]! Surprise, says Aristotle, is the beginning of
philosophizing. You have ended at the beginning. Otherwise, would the surprising
fact have escaped you that in Germany communistic principles are spread,
not by the liberals, but by your reactionary friends?
Who speaks of handicraft corporations? The reactionaries. the
artisan class is to form a state within a state. Do you find it extraordinary
that such ideas, couched in modern terms, thus read: "The state should
transform itself into an artisan class"? If the state is to be a state
for the artisan, but if the modern artisan, like any modern man, understands
and can understand the state only as a sphere shared by all his fellow
citizens -- how can you synthesize both of these ideas in any other way
except in an artisan state?
Who polemicizes about parceling out the land? The reactionaries.
A recently published feudalistic writing (Kosegarten on land parceling)
went so far as to call private property a privilege. This is Fourier's
principle. Once there is agreement on principles, may not there then be
disagreement over consequences and implications?
The Rheinische Zeitung, which cannot concede the theoretical
reality of communist ideas even in their present form, and can even less
wish or consider possible their practical realization, will submit these
ideas to a thorough criticism. If the Augsburg paper demanded and wanted
more than slick phrases, it would see that writings such as those of Leroux,
Considerant, and above all Proudhon's penetrating work, can be criticized,
not through superficial notions of the moment, but only after long and
deep study. We consider such "theoretical" works the more seriously as
we do not agree with the Augsburg paper, which finds the "reality" of communist
ideas not in Plato but in some obscure acquaintance who, not without some
merit in some branches of scientific research, gave up the entire fortune
that was at his disposal at the time and polished his confederates' dishes
and boots, according to the will of Father Enfantin. We are firmly convinced
that it is not the practical Attempt, but rather the theoretical
application of communist ideas, that constitutes the real danger;
for practical attempts, even those on a large scale, can be answered with
cannon as soon as they become dangerous, but ideas, which conquer our intelligence,
which overcome the outlook that reason has riveted to our conscience, are
chains from which we cannot tear ourselves away without tearing our hearts;
they are demons that man can overcome only by submitting to them. But the
Augsburg paper has never come to know the troubled conscience that is evoked
by a rebellion of man's subjective wishes against the objective insights
of his own reason, because it possesses neither reason nor insight nor
conscience.
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