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Special pages :
Report of the Speeches Made by Marx and Engels at the General Meeting of the Democratic Society in Cologne on August 4, 1848
Author(s) | Karl Marx Friedrich Engels |
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Written | 23 August 1848 |
Printed according to the newspaper
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 7
Hermann Becker, one of the leaders of the Cologne Democratic Society, despite Marx’s objections, invited Wilhelm Weitling who had returned from emigration to address a general meeting.
In his speech delivered on July 21, 1848, Weitling, who called himself “a democrat, socialist and communist”, proclaimed as a vital task of the revolution the establishment of a dictatorial Provisional Government consisting of a narrow circle of persons—”very keen people”, having in mind himself as the sole dictator. Like Gottschalk, Weitling ignored the bourgeois-democratic character of the revolution and called for immediate and revolutionary fulfilment of his Utopian plans for social transformation, considering that political questions merely distracted from the main aim. At the next meeting of the Democratic Society on August 4, Marx gave his reply. We can only judge the contents of his speech from this newspaper report. The author of this highly imperfect report, apparendy, did not clearly understand the meaning of Marx’s speech and some propositions are therefore presented in very confusing and inexact manner.
In his speech, Marx dealt especially with the peculiarities of the German revolution and its vital task: to eliminate the remnants of feudalism. In his controversy with Weitling, Marx stressed the close connection between political and social struggle, the inseparability and interdependence of political and social demands. The principal difference between Marx’s position and that of Weiding was also manifest in the issue of the form of government which should be established after the victory of the revolution. Emphatically rejecting the idea of a one-man dictatorship, Marx saw the necessity to establish a revolutionarydemocratic dictatorship founded on the union of those classes which had accomplished the revolution — proletariat, peasantry and petty bourgeoisie.
[...] Hereupon Dr. Marx, editor-in-chief of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, examines the principles of Herr Weitling, pronounced at the meeting of the Democratic Society held a fortnight ago, and in a pithy and fairly long speech seeks to prove, on the grounds of the historical development of the revolutions that have taken place during the last few centuries, that, the separation of political and social interests assumed by Weitling is as unthinkable as their direct opposition, that, rather, the political and social interests must interpenetrate. The claim that social development retards political development was also incorrect; unfortunately, in respect of social development we Germans had only now arrived at the point which the French had already reached in the year 1789; the present contradictions could only be resolved by sharply defining them and emphasising the interests of the individual classes; only in this way, that is by using intellectual weapons, can an amicable settlement be achieved. The disregard of the position of the various strata of the population to one another, the refusal to make reciprocal concessions and wrong notions about class relations have led to the bloody outcome in Paris. The dictatorship which Weitling proposed as the most desirable constitutional form is, for similar reasons, regarded by Marx as impractical and quite unfeasible, since power cannot be attained by a single class; the intention to carry on a dictatorship in accordance with a system devised by a single brain, deserves to be called nonsensical. On the contrary, the governing power, just as the Provisional Government in Paris, must consist of the most heterogeaneous elements, which by means of an exchange of views have to agree on the most appropriate mode of administration.
Herr Engels reports on the Government’s rejection of the application for citizenship of Dr. Marx. As the latter was a Rhineland Prussian by birth, and as since the March revolution all political refugees have had their citizenship restored to them, this interpretation of citizenship involved injustice and breach of faith; he would thereby be regarded as a foreigner who could be expelled at any time.