WeeklyWorker

28.04.2016

Better bad unity than bad disunity

Jack Conrad examines the German question in light of the perspectives of the Marx-Engels team

German unification in the 19th century does not represent a direct parallel with contemporary Europe - there are, for example, 24 official working languages in the European Union. Nonetheless, valuable lessons - theoretical and programmatic - can be drawn. This is particularly so because Germany was the birthplace of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and remained a preoccupying concern despite their permanent exile in Britain after the failure of the 1848 revolution.

Admittedly, given the division of labour between the two men, much of what I shall quote comes under the signature of Engels. Yet they communicated with each other virtually daily and worked so closely that to all intents and purposes they formed a single political entity. Therefore, when one says ‘Engels’ one might just as well say ‘Marx’ - or even ‘Marx-Engels’. Having underlined that particular point, let us move on.

In the early 1840s, when Marx and Engels began their partnership, Germany was woefully backward, compared with France, Belgium, Holland and, above all, Britain. There existed no common foreign policy, no common army, no common economy, no common education system, no common system of weights and measures, no common currency. Internal disputes and wars of foreign intervention were endemic. Migrants were Germany’s biggest export - especially to Britain and North America.1 The people suffered from the double burden of government over-taxation and lack of spending. In short Germany desperately required a radical unification. Without unity there could be neither capitalist progress nor hope for working class rule - so reasoned Marx and Engels. Tasks of national unification and social revolution therefore interwove.

Germany was a cultural expression, reflecting history and language, but found itself divided into dozens of rival absolutist states, ranging in size from the medium to the micro. During medieval times this was, of course, true for most of western and central Europe. Feudalism is characterised by decentralisation and fragmentation in extremis. Only England - because of the thoroughgoing nature of the 1066 conquest - constituted a partial exception.

‘Old Germany’ - the Holy Roman Empire - was founded in 962 and lasted till 1806. Quixotic Roman empireship ideologically blunted goals of German unification from above and steered energies and resources into fruitless campaigns of Italian conquest (reminiscent of the Plantagenet and Lancaster feudal monarchies in England and their countless wars in France).

To cap it all, the 16th century German religious revolution proved inconclusive. Protestant nobles, imperial cities and peasant masses failed to unite their efforts against the Catholic enemy. The Holy Roman Empire was nevertheless reduced to a shell and as such drifted towards historical irrelevance. The centralism of the parts overwhelmed the centralism of the whole. Over these hardening petty divisions Germany found itself cleaved into hostile theological zones: a predominantly Protestant north; a predominantly Catholic, but mixed, south-west; and an exclusively Catholic south-east.

Germany shows an opposite pattern to France and England. France crushed the Protestant Huguenots in 1685. England broke with Rome under Henry VIII. Both countries were therefore essentially mono-religious. Aside from the obvious advantage of cohesion this brought, the “eventual suppression” of Protestantism in France, was, comments Engels, “no misfortune”. Instead of Protestantism the country is blessed with enlightenment thinkers, such as Voltaire and Diderot. Anti-clericalism constitutes the other France and stands today as the dominant intellectual tradition.

Being a precursor, the English form of development is in many ways comparatively primitive. The official Protestantism of the Tudor and Stuart monarchs was Catholicism without the pope. Put another way - semi-Catholic. Engels mockingly describes England’s universities, colleges and public schools as “Protestant monasteries”.2 Real Protestantism in England came in the form of the Lollards, Puritans and Methodists. Yet there is still no theoretically rigorous mass tradition of anti-clericalism, let alone atheism - a definite misfortune.

Religious divisions and the hollowing out of the Holy Roman Empire turned Germany into the main battleground for the contending Protestant and Catholic powers in the 16th and 17th centuries. The pope, the Spanish and Austrian Hapsburgs, the German Catholic princes - all fought it out with the Protestant German states and their backers in Bohemia, Denmark, Sweden and the Dutch Republic. The result of the Thirty Years War (1618-46) was death, plunder and a political-theological division sealed with the 1648 treaty of Westphalia. Germany became a byword for fragmentation and economic stagnation.

A ray of light shone out amidst the mordant decay. Intellectual life flourished. Handel, Mozart, Goethe, Schiller, Kant and Fichte. A short while later, Beethoven and Hegel. German economic and social backwardness found its opposite in music, literature and philosophy. All served as a kind of hope. After Copernicus, Galileo and Newton, Catholicism hardly deserves to be taken seriously as an object of criticism. It could be defeated intellectually by ridicule alone. Eg, randy priests, cruel abbesses, imprisoned nuns and sadistic inquisitors frequently appear in Gothic novels. On the other hand, German Protestantism was “worth criticising”. It could only be overcome “scientifically”: that is, in the words of Engels, “explained historically” - a feat which is in actual fact beyond the natural sciences.3 Hence Ludwig Feuerbach’s The essence of Christianity and then Karl Kautsky’s Foundations of Christianity.

Where Britain forged itself into a nation, with a common economy binding its peoples together, Germany languished in disunity. Each electorate, principality, bishopric and duchy acted independently of the others. All were formally subject to the Holy Roman emperor - if there was one - and the imperial diet (consisting of electors, princes and delegations from the imperial cities it was meant to keep in check). However, the emperor increasingly became a fiction and the diet never did anything serious - its deliberations became a laughing stock.

To further its expansionist goals in the east Catholic France was quite prepared to back German Protestant princes. Hence, it was not uncommon to find that, when the Holy Roman Empire solemnly declared itself at war, various component states were to be found aligned with the other side. Fragmentation thereby led to disintegration. French-speaking areas on the western bank of the Rhine were hacked away. First Burgundy, then the three bishoprics of Metz, Toul and Verdun, then the rest of Lorraine, and finally parts of Flanders and Alsace were joined to France. In a similar manner, Switzerland was allowed to establish an independent confederation and what is now Belgium was handed to Spain under the terms of Charles V’s public - and most famous - abdication. All fared better separated off from Germany.

Germany found itself in a blind alley. Remnants of feudalism still held sway everywhere and serfdom was rigorously reinforced in the east. The nobility had military officers, palaces and court musicians to maintain. For the serfs that meant labour services, tributes, land-sale taxes, death taxes, protection money, etc. Besides taxes the serfs were expected to hand over an inexhaustible supply of young female flesh. Either that or receive a sound beating. Every attempt at resistance was savagely put down.

What of the imperial cities? They were hardly beacons of liberty. The burgermaster and a caste of self-selected senators ruled like tyrants. Cheated and robbed by the princes, the bourgeois class tried to profit from the chaos. They righted the wrongs done to them by their oppressors by cheating and robbing in turn.

If they had put themselves at the head of the people, they might have been able to refound the country, as the bourgeoisie did between 1640 and 1688 in England and in 1789 in France. But the German bourgeoisie was weak, cowardly and lacked decisive leadership. Engels seethes with contempt for this class. He compared it to shit - or, in the polite translation, “dung”: “Germany is nothing but a dunghill, but they [the bourgeoisie] were comfortable in the dung because they were dung themselves, and were kept warm by the dung about them.”4

The 1789 French revolution acted like a thunderbolt in Germany - not upon the mass of the people, but the middle classes and sections of the aristocracy. But their enthusiasm was, said Engels, “theoretical”. Once the French revolution moved to its most extreme stage with the fall of the Gironde, as those below exerted maximum pressure, polite approval gave way to downright hostility: “Germany was converted to a fanatic hatred against the revolution.”5 The bourgeoisie preferred the dunghill.

But the Holy Roman Empire was reaching its point of no return. Once he had “exploded every trace of democracy” and had “all power” heaped on his “single head”, Napoleon directed his armies into the heart of Germany.6 France preached liberty, equality before the law … and modernisation. Nobles, abbots and pampered hangers-on fled in droves. Napoleon was “always revolutionary vis-à-vis the princes”.7 He formally dissolved the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 and reorganised a bloc of the western German states into the French-aligned Confederation of the Rhine. The Code Napoléon was imposed - infinitely superior to the feudal law that had previously crippled Germany.

Napoleon attempted to unify Europe from above: “I wished to found a European system, a European code of laws, a European judiciary: there would be but one people in Europe,” he declared in his St Helena exile.8 A laudable goal, to be achieved through blood and iron. Not surprisingly then, despite Napoleon shattering the ancienrégimes in Germany, Spain and Italy, his methods alienated those whom he sought to lift out of benighted darkness. Germany’s peasants resented the requisitions, the taxes and the brutal conscription of 60,000 sons into the Grande Armée. The bourgeoisie was, however, particularly parochial. The 1806 embargo against British goods might have laid the basis for German industry in the future, but, meanwhile, it meant certain imports were unavailable - Engels cites coffee.

Disappointed by the lack of revolutionary zeal, Engels tore into all classes. The peasants must be, he said, “the most stupid set of people in existence”. German students and the run-of-the-mill intellectuals fared no better. As to the bourgeoisie, they merely wanted to buy cheap and sell dear ... and drink unadulterated coffee. Nevertheless Engels has to admit that, whereas before there was only self-interest, a dawning German national consciousness had begun to appear.

In this context, it is worth mentioning the reactionary anti-imperialism of Andreas Hofer. He was the leader of peasant guerrilla war against the French army in Tyrol in 1809.9 Shades of Hamas, bin Laden, the Taliban, Islamic State, etc. Years later, Hofer had evolved into something of a folk hero amongst republicans and democrats in Britain. They would merrily toast his memory and cheer his name. Engels hated such misdirected solidarity and tried to put the historical record straight. He roundly condemned Hofer and his backward-looking programme. Hofer was a “stupid, ignorant, bigoted, fanatical peasant”. He fought for the “church and emperor”, for the paternal despotism of Rome and Vienna. Yes, he fought bravely, but, as Engels pointed out, so did the counterrevolutionary French peasantry of the Vendée.10 Engels contrasted him to Thomas Müntzer, the leader of the peasant insurrection of 1525. He was worthy of being celebrated.

New order

Britain, Austria, Russia, Prussia and the whole of reactionary Europe fought for the downfall of Napoleon, so as to snuff out the French Revolution. The final act came with the battle of Waterloo in June 1815. However, such was the fear of the French people that, though the Bourbon dynasty was restored, they got a tolerably liberal constitution. Elsewhere the counterrevolution was pressed home - in an upper class swirl of balls, celebrations and casual sexual encounters, the 1814 Congress of Vienna saw the nations of Europe bought and sold, divided and augmented.

Only four powers really knew how to achieve their strategic objectives. All the rest was thwarted ambition, sentimental posturing or deluded petty pleading. Austria sought to stave off the danger of revolution by restoring dynastic legitimacy. Britain wanted to maintain its colonial supremacy and ensure a docile Europe. Russia strove to fully integrate itself into the European state system and add yet more territory to its vast empire. France attempted not to suffer too much. And, of course, each state tried to block or hinder rivals. The final result was a counterrevolutionary new world order.11

At the prompting of Austria’s Klemens von Metternich, grand dukes and religious orders were reinstalled in Italy, radical movements suppressed and Prussian plans to absorb Saxony scuppered. Though returned to its 1795 borders, Bourbon France was readmitted into the inner circle of European powers. Britain extended its maritime power and domination of European markets. As for Russia, it became master of eastern and central Europe. Tsar Alexander II gobbled up most of Poland, installed a puppet king in Denmark and re-‘Balkanised’ Germany. To ensure it could never stand up to Russian might, 36 states were carefully crafted and, to make matters worse, they were disorganised into over 200 separate patches of land. Not surprisingly most of these states were obsessed with their own legitimacy.

What the German people gained with Napoleon’s invasion they lost through his defeat.

The tinpot despots uprooted French liberties and reintroduced old ways. Yet a return to pre-1789 conditions was impossible. The bourgeoisie was not strong enough to govern. But it was strong enough to force some concessions. Hence the reaction was somewhat restrained. Constitutional guarantees were granted in some places: Bavaria, Wurttemberg, Baden, Hanover. Elsewhere aristocratic elites pretended to take care of the interests of the middle classes by putting on a show of good governance.

Ironically William III’s Prussia was another factor holding back the counterrevolution. Of course, he did so for his own counterrevolutionary reasons. Prussia vied with Austria for domination over Germany - and, in order to weaken the other German states, he pressed them into enacting “mongrel constitutions”, which provided for vaguely representative assemblies. Yet, while the micro autocracies were weakened, no actual power was given to the people, not even the middle classes.

Such an arrangement satisfied no-one. Neither the Christian Germanists, romantics and reactionaries nor the liberals. And from these two last-named sects - they were not parties - arose the “mongrel liberals” who between 1815 and 1830 formed the dominant opposition current. Yet, trapped in the numerous petty states, the liberal-reactionary middle classes proved utterly impotent. In their secret societies they drew up schemes for a German emperor wearing a crown, purple and all the gaudy imperial rubbish - not to forget an assembly of estates, in which clergy, nobility, bourgeoisie and peasants would be properly separated. They shunned the 1789 revolution. Their model was medieval, their intentions servile.

Post-Napoleonic Germany was a confederacy of states. But there was no risk of the people imposing their will. There was no genuinely representative national assembly. The delegates who formed the confederal diet were sent by governments alone. Every state was bound by resolutions of the diet. But between them Prussia and Austria ruled. All they needed to do was to threaten to abandon the micro-autocracies in their struggle with their assemblies and the lesser princes would snap into line. Nothing could be done in the petty states. Prussia and Austria alone were crucial.

Engels contemptuously dismissed the Prussian king, William III, as one of the “greatest blockheads that ever graced a throne”.12 The man knew only two feelings - fear and imperiousness. The king of Prussia had been cheated by Britain, cheated by France, cheated by the emperors of Russia and Austria. Nevertheless, he was happy. Napoleon had been beaten. Fear lifted. Having had half his kingdom confiscated by Napoleon, he surrounded himself with half-and-half reformers. They abolished servitude and feudal services, and reorganised the local municipalities. An unthreatening constitution was drafted - though it never appeared in law. However, 15 years after the Congress of Vienna, the masses of Paris rose once more. Fear returned.

The 1830 revolution signalled the general outbreak of middle class, aristocratic and popular discontent throughout Europe. The results were mixed. The aristocratic Polish revolution failed. The bourgeoisie in France and Belgium succeeded. The British middle classes won the reform bill which gave them the vote. In Italy the insurrection was defeated after pope Gregory XIV appealed for Austrian aid. In the spring of 1831 the Austrian army marched in and overwelmed province after province.

In Germany there were several dozen insurrections between 1830 and 1834. All were hampered by the division into numerous states. There was no focal point. However, two or three of the middle class revolutions managed to succeed. Germany began to move. Headed by Prussia, 17 of the states came together to form a customs union - the Zollverein - in 1834. Austria was kept out and created its own separate tariff system. The Zollverein ushered in free trade between its members and, with Prussia leading negotiations, subsequent trade agreements were cemented with the Netherlands (1839), Belgium (1844), France (1862) and Britain (1865). The Zollverein saw the building of a German railway network, the general introduction of steam power and the growth of an internal market.

Interestingly the US historian, Paul Kennedy, suggests that in some respects the situation in mid-19th century Germany was “similar” to the European Economic Community - economic success encouraged new members to join and that created the possibility of turning the customs union into “a power state” and a “major new actor in the international system”.13

Though unanimous votes were needed and each state clung “tenaciously to their sovereign rights”, the Zollverein union represented the de facto acceptance of Prussian hegemony in Germany.14

Communists

Despite the miserable record of the middle classes, Marx and Engels were, in 1847, still looking for a German version of the 1789 French revolution. “The party of the bourgeoisie is,” said Engels, “the only one that at present has a chance of success.”15 Both men expected the bourgeoisie to do their historic duty and take the lead. Their party, the communists, would try to win the minuscule, but rapidly growing, working class to fight alongside them. But, once the bourgeoisie secured power, the workers would constitute themselves the party of extreme opposition. From here the proletariat would gather their strength before squaring up for the next, final, battle, which would be with the bourgeoisie.

Marx and Engels had definite immediate aims vis-à-vis the constitutional question in Germany. The first demand of the Communist Party in Germany was that the whole country “shall be declared a single and indivisible republic”.16 To ensure a democratic and lasting unification the ‘giants’ of Germany, Austria and Prussia had to be broken up into autonomous provinces. The interests of the proletariat ruled out either the Prussianisation or Austrianisation of Germany, just as much as the perpetuation of its division into petty states. The working class required the unification of Germany into a fully-fledged nation.

Interestingly, given our current concerns, echoing the likes of William Penn, Henri de Saint-Simon and Giuseppe Mazzini, Engels mused about the possibility of a “European federation”. However, for him, it had to be based on the unity of all the main nations of Europe - defined by common language and fellow feeling.17 In other words, a centralised German republic was a precondition for the voluntary coming together of Europe.

In 1848 a powerful revolutionary wave swept Europe. Paris took the lead; Italy and Hungary followed; the Chartists in Britain made plans for a nationwide physical-force uprising. Germany was no exception: Munich, Cologne, Berlin, Vienna, Dresden, Frankfurt. Street barricades were built, constitutions rewritten, crowns wobbled.

Marx and Engels hastily packed their bags and returned to Germany, along with some 400 fellow Communist League members. Under their leadership the working class in Germany appeared before history in its own right and with its own mission. And yet, though the communists pushed, pleaded and pulled, the bourgeoisie refused to act in any decisive fashion. A miserable bunch. No Cromwell, no Ireton, no Robespierre, no Washington.

The Frankfurt national assembly generated plenty of hot air and countless proclamations. It thought itself a parliament, but the country it ruled over existed in the imagination alone. Its resolutions amounted to fiction. No king or prince was overthrown. No independent army raised. The official left of the Frankfurt assembly were little better. Marx and Engels lambasted the radical democrats for their timid plan for a federal monarchical Germany. The petty princes would remain as constitutional monarchies, but the central government was to be republican! The ‘model’ of these radicals was the USA. But, of course, they shied away from their own 1776.

It was under these circumstances that Marx and Engels developed their programme of permanent revolution - the working class would take the lead in the anti-autocratic national revolution and, having done so, would take things as far as objective circumstances permitted.

Because of its autocracy, relatively large size and long militaristic tradition, Prussia was viewed as the main obstacle to revolution in Germany. Prussia might attempt to unite Germany - but it would do so as an act of counterrevolution. Even then, it could only unite Germany by tearing Germany apart. Prussia would have to lock Austria out. The same would apply to Austria - the most conservative German state. An Austrian Germany would have to lock Prussia out. Hence, under either Prussia or Austria there could only be a ‘smaller Germany’. That is why, in the name of “real unification”, Marx and Engels wanted to see the “dissolution” of Prussia and “disintegration” of the Austrian empire.18 If Germany were ever to achieve anything worthwhile, there could be neither an Austria nor a Prussia.

It should be stressed that Marx and Engels sought the “dissolution” of Prussia and the “disintegration” of Austria in the context of bringing about a centralised revolutionary social republic. A country like Germany, which had suffered from extreme fragmentation, needed, if it was to survive, the most “stringent revolutionary centralisation”. This was especially so because the Germany of 1848 contained “20 Vendées” and found itself sandwiched between the two most powerful and most centralised European states: ie, Russia and France. Such a country cannot, in the present period of universal revolution, avoid “either civil war or war with other countries”, proclaimed Engels.19

Specifically Marx-Engels advocated a revolutionary liberation war against Russia - that would unite Germany on the basis of democracy and hold out the promise of Polish independence and reunification. But, though Germany had made “several dozen small and big revolutions”, the actual situation narrowed the mental horizons of the middle classes instead of broadening them. To ingratiate itself with the partitioning powers - Russia, Prussia and Austria - the Frankfurt national assembly endorsed the division of Poland.

With such a cowering, directionless and feeble assembly the writing was on the wall. By 1850 the situation had been stabilised in favour of reaction - especially in the ‘big’ German powers, Prussia and Austria. Concessions were rolled back. However, Engels explained the defeat of the revolution not in terms of the betrayal of this or that leader. Rather he blamed the fragmentation of Germany. The incoherence, myopia and irresolution which prevailed at every turn derived from interests so varied, so conflicting, so strangely antithetical, that decisive action was impossible.

After the failure of 1848 some disillusioned liberals began to yearn for unity under Prussia. But, as explained above, that meant little Germany locking out Austria. For their part, the most conservative nationalists pinned their hopes on Austrian domination. The dream was of Austria, Prussia and the rest of Germany uniting into a federal state and then proceeding to Germanise Austria’s Hungarian and Danube empire through schools, laws, colonies and a strong military hand. The formerly Austrian Netherlands would also be incorporated, albeit as a vassal state. Engels damned these “patriotic fanatics”.20 Meantime, disorientated radicals sank into admiration of the Swiss constitution. Only the communists remained true to the German republic, “one and indivisible”.

Half-revolution

As the reader might well know, in 1866 the armies of Prussia defeated Austria in a lightning eight-day war. From this moment onwards Prussia stopped viewing the rest of Germany as prey. Prussia became nationalised. Germany was its protectorate - even if that meant excluding a large part of Germany: ie, Austria. War with France followed. Again Prussian forces scored a swift and resounding victory. France surrendered. Napoleon III was replaced by the second republic. Prussia could now impose its terms on the rest of Germany and in 1871 William I of Prussia assumed the title of German emperor.

Let us note, both Marx and Engels predicted a new war - between Russia (aligned with France) and Germany. This, however, was something they now dreaded. The transition to socialism would be put off by such a bloodbath. Engels warned that such a “conflict will be the downfall of the Prussian state and the Prussian army - probably in a war with Russia, which might last four years - and would yield nothing but disease and shattered bones”.21 He also talked of 20 million deaths.

How did Engels assess this Prussian version of German unity? Bismarck - Prussia’s uncrowned Bonaparte - had, he said, carried out a “revolution” and a “revolution with revolutionary methods”. Only, because it was carried out from above, it was “not revolutionary enough”; this half-unification of Germany was only a “half-revolution”.22

Real measures which unified the country were welcomed as a step forward: eg, the common legal code and Bismarck’s legislation creating common banking laws and a common currency over the years 1873-75. Engels expressed the opinion that it would have been better if the mark could have been pegged to one of the big three - dollar, pound or franc.

Yet Prussia had not dissolved into Germany. Instead Bismarck introduced the Prussian system throughout most of Germany. Bavaria and the southern states retained a degree of autonomy. In certain ways it was as if the semi-feudal Scottish highlands had managed to conquer England in 1745. Political power resided with the emperor, a caste of aristocratic bureaucrats and the military top brass. Universal male suffrage was granted, but the emperor appointed the chancellor and the feeble Reichstag could not turn down tax demands. A carbon copy of the 1850 Prussian constitution. Put another way, there existed a pseudo-constitutionalism. The Reichstag served as a fig leaf for absolutism. Germany was in fact a military despotism with parliamentary embellishments.

But this was no return to the past. Germany set itself on a course of rapid industrialisation and with that the bourgeoisie came to exercise a decisive influence. There also came into existence a powerful, well organised and highly educated proletariat.

It was in these promising circumstances that Marx - writing in 1875, in what became known as the Critique of the Gotha programme - took issue with his comrades in the newly formed Social Democratic Party. They were reluctant to highlight the demand for the abolition of the monarchy. By contrast Marx renewed his call for a “democratic republic” against the Prusso-German monarchy.23 A theme Engels elaborated upon some 15 years later in his Critique of the draft programme in 1891.

Engels attacked Prussianism and the peaceful illusions being entertained by some party leaders in Germany. There could conceivably be a peaceful transition to socialism in countries where the “representatives of the people concentrate all power in their hands, where, if one has the support of the majority of the people, one can do as one sees fit in a constitutional way; in democratic republics such as France and the USA, in monarchies such as Britain ... where this dynasty is powerless against the people”.24 But not absolutist Germany.

Doubtless, not a good formulation. Relying on the army, the courts and the big capitalists in France, the US or Britain to meekly accept a popular vote which declares for the socialist republic is hardly a realistic course of action. Of course, what Engels is combating here is constitutional illusions in the SDP; he is not seeking to promote them in France, the US and Britain. Anyway, showing his appreciation of tactics, Engels admits that, due to police censorship and legal restrictions, it may not be possible for the SDP to baldly demand the abolition of the monarchy in its programme. Some devious formulation ought to be concocted therefore. Either way, Engels is insistent that the working class “can only come to power under the form of a democratic republic”. He calls this the “specific form for the dictatorship of the proletariat”.25

So as to open up the road to working class power, Engels argues for the “reconstruction of Germany”. The system of small states within Prusso-Germany “must be abolished”. How, as he asks, can you revolutionise society, while there are special rights for Baden-Württemberg and even the small state of Thuringia consists of statelets? Again he balances off the abolition of the small states with the call to abolish Prussia and break it up into “self-governing provinces”. For Engels the system of small states and Prussianism are the “two sides of the antithesis now gripping Germany in a vice”, in which one side “must also serve as an excuse and justification for the existence of the other”.26

What should take the place of Prusso-Germany? Engels opposes federalism and repeats the demand for the “one and indivisible republic”. He is no dogmatist. Remember, there is no principle involved. The goal is to achieve the maximum voluntary union between peoples - most importantly the working class.

In his reckoning, federalism is on the whole necessary in the “gigantic” USA, although in the eastern states it was already “becoming a hindrance”. “It would be a step forward” in the British Isles, where the two islands have four peoples - English, Scots, Irish, Welsh - three different systems of legislation and at the time a single parliament. In “little” Switzerland, federalism “has long been a hindrance, tolerable only because Switzerland is content to be a purely passive member of the European state system”. For Germany, federalism on the Swiss model would be an “enormous step backwards”. Germany already had a second, federal, chamber - the Bundesrat - that, like the House of Lords in Britain, served reaction. Germany certainly did not need separate legislation enacted in each state or canton.

No, the best conditions for progress and preparing the working class for the revolutionary transition to socialism is the unified democratic republic: ie, elections at every level, local self-administration and absence of bureaucracy, a militia system and the abolition of the standing army.

Notes

1. See JR Davis, S Manz and MS Beerbühl (eds) Transnational networks Leiden 2012.

2. K Marx and F Engels CW Vol 23, London 1988, p608.

3. Ibid.

4. K Marx and F Engels CW Vol 6, New York 1976, p17.

5. Ibid p18.

6. Antoine de Thibaudeau, quoted in W Hazlitt The life of Napoleon Bonaparte Vol 1, London 1862, p358n.

7. K Marx and F Engels CW Vol 23, London 1988, p603.

8. WHC Smith The Bonapartes London 2005, p93.

9. See F Gunter Eyck Loyal rebels Washington DC 1986.

10. K Marx and F Engels CW Vol 6, New York 1976, p26.

11. See H Kissinger A world restored Boston MA, 1957.

12. K Marx and F Engels CW Vol 6, New York 1976, p23.

13. P Kennedy The rise and fall of the great powers London 1989, pp608-09.

14. WO Henderson The rise of German industrial power Berkeley CA 1975, p37.

15. K Marx and F Engels CW Vol 6, New York 1976, p86.

16. K Marx and F Engels CW Vol 7, Moscow 1977, p3.

17. Ibid p51.

18. K Marx and F Engels CW Vol 26, London 1990, p124.

19. K Marx and F Engels CW Vol 7, Moscow 1977, pp237-38.

20. K Marx and F Engels CW Vol 16, London 1980, p217.

21. K Marx and F Engels CW Vol 23, London 1988, p604.

22. K Marx and F Engels CW Vol 26, London 1990, p481.

23. K Marx and F Engels CW Vol 24, London 1989, p95.

24. K Marx and F Engels CW Vol 27, London 1990, p226.

25. Ibid p227.

26. Ibid p228.