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Special pages :
Decisions of the General Meeting of the Cologne Workers' Association Held on April 16, 1849
Author(s) | Friedrich Engels Karl Marx |
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Written | 22 April 1849 |
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 9
These decisions by the general meeting of the Cologne Workersâ Association were connected with the policy of strengthening the class independence of the workersâ organisations and with practical steps to form a mass political party in Germany. Marx, Engels and their associates in the Communist League and the Neue Rheinische Zeitung adopted this policy in view of the changes that had taken place in the countryâs political situation by the spring of 1849 (see Note 225). Marx and Engels attached great importance to the Cologne Workersâ Association in their plans for founding the party. By that time, the Association had become the bulwark of their ideological influence on the workersâ movement and one of the initiators of the union of workersâ associations in the Rhine Province and throughout Germany.
The Cologne Workersâ Association â a workersâ organisiation founded on April 13, 1848 by Andreas Gottschalk. By the beginning of May it had up to 5,000 members, most of whom were workers and artisans. The Association was headed by a President and a committee, which included representatives of various trades, and had several branches.
Most of the leading figures in the Workersâ Association (Gottschalk, Anneke, Schapper, Moll, Lessner, Jansen, Rïżœser, Nothjung, Bedorf) were members of the Communist League. After Gottschalkâs arrest on July 6, Moll was elected President of the Association, and on October 16, on request of the Associationâs members, the presidency was temporarily assumed by Marx. From February to May 1849 the post was held by Schapper.
In the initial period of its existence, the Workersâ Association was influenced by Gottschalk who ignored the tasks of the proletariat in the democratic revolution, pursued a policy of boycotting elections to representative institutions and came out against a union with democracy. Gottschalk combined ultra-Left phrases with quite moderate methods of struggle (e.g. petitions) and support for the demands advanced by workers affected by craft prejudices. From the very outset, Gottschalkâs sectarian position was opposed by the supporters of Marx and Engels. Under their impact, a change took place at the end of June 1848 in the activities of the Workersâ Association, which became a centre of revolutionary agitation among the workers, and from the autumn of 1848 among the peasants as well. Propaganda of scientific communism and study of Marxâs works were carried on within the Association. It maintained contacts with other workersâ and democratic organisations.
With the aim of strengthening the Association, Marx, Schapper and its other leaders reorganised it in January and February 1849. On February 25, new Rules were adopted declaring a higher class consciousness on the part of the workers to be the main task of the Association.
The mounting counter-revolution and intensified police persecution frustrated the Associationâs activities aimed at unity and organisation of the working masses. After the Neue Rheinische Zeitung was suppressed and Marx, Schapper and other leaders left Cologne, the Association gradually turned into an ordinary workersâ educational society.
The meeting unanimously resolves:
1. To withdraw from the Union of Democratic Associations of Germany and to join instead the Union of German Workersâ Associations, the Central Committee of which is in Leipzig.[1]
2. With the aim of a closer union of the purely social party, to authorise the Committee of the Workersâ Association to convene in Cologne a provincial congress of all Workersâ Associations of the Rhineland and Westphalia, prior to the holding of the general Workersâ Congress in Leipzig.[2]
3. To send delegates to the Congress of Workersâ Associations of Germany which will take place shortly in Leipzig.
- â The reference is to the Central Committee of German Workers that was elected at the Workersâ Congress held in Berlin from August 23 to September 3, 1848. At this congress the Workersâ Fraternity, a union of many workersâ associations, was founded. The programme of the congress was drawn up under the influence of Stephan Born and set the workers the task of implementing narrow craft-union demands, thereby diverting them from the revolutionary struggle. The Central Committee, which included Stephan Born, Schwenniger and Kick, had its headquarters in Leipzig. At the end of 1848, under the impact of the revolutionary events and experience drawn from them, the leaders of the Workersâ Fraternity began to display certain revolutionary tendencies. They recognised the need to arm the workers and for them to take an active part in the political struggle. There was a great desire to set up an all-German workersâ organisation. In the spring of 1849, the Workersâ Fraternity and a number of regional congresses of workersâ associations proposed that a national workersâ congress be convened in Leipzig to found a general workersâ union. These plans, however, were frustrated by the developing counter-revolution.
- â See this volume, p. 495.â Ed.