The Parliamentary Debate on the Anti-Socialist Law (Outline of an Article)

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Marx wrote these notes on the basis of the stenographic report on the first debate in the Reichstag of the Anti-Socialist Law (Gesetz gegen die gemeingefährlichen Bestrebungen der Sozialdemokratie. See: Stenographische Berichte über die Verhandlungen des Deutschen Reichstags, Vol. 1, Berlin, 1878, pp. 29-91). The report was sent to Marx by Wilhelm Bracke, a leader of the German Social-Democrats. Marx’s and Engels’ letters (Marx to Engels on September 17, Engels to Marx on September 18 and Marx to Jenny Marx on September 17, 1878, see present edition, Vol. 45) show that they closely followed the debates in the Reichstag and the comments of the British press. The Law was passed on October 21, 1878 (see Note 289).

Marx intended this piece to be the basis for an article in The Daily News (see Marx’s letter to Engels of September 24, 1878, present edition, Vol. 45), but his plan remained unrealised.

For the first time, Marx’s manuscript was published in Russian in the Marx-Engels Archives, Vol. I (VI), 1932, pp. 389-400. It appeared in German in Werke, Bd. 34, S. 491-500.

Excerpts from this work were published in English for the first time in: K. Marx, F. Engels, V. I. Lenin, On the Socialist Revolution, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1978, pp. 61-62, and in: K. Marx and F. Engels, The Socialist Revolution, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1981, pp. 241-42.

In the present edition the work is printed according to the manuscript. The italics in the quotations are Marx’s.

REICHSTAG SITTING OF SEPTEMBER 16 AND 17, 1878

Vice-Bismarck—von Stolberg spoke for 4 minutes, 7 seconds.

FROM THE STENOGRAPHIC REPORT

Reichstag. 4th sitting. Monday, September 16, 1878. Speaker: Forckenbeck.

//House met 11.30. Adjourned 3.40.//

Deputising for the Imperial Chancellor, Minister of State, Count Stolberg-Wernigerode:

"What will matter is ... ensuring that in future no one can engage in such agitation with the slightest semblance of legality."

FROM THE SPEECHES AT THE SITTING OF SEPTEMBER 16

ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT

Bebel: "Gentlemen, at the beginning of today's debate attention was specifically drawn by the Imperial Chancellor's deputy to the attempted assassinations, as was similarly done a few days since in the King's Speech and likewise in the preamble to the Bill submitted to us; everyone who has spoken today has likewise more or less touched on the assassination attempts, and everyone has designated those assassination attempts as the immediate occasion for this exceptional law, nor could anything be more evident than that they were the cause thereof.—In that case, Gentlemen, the government might justly have been expected to express itself clearly and accurately in this respect, to give evidence as to what discoveries it had made, what facts incriminating us had been brought to light that might prove the existence of just one, if only an ideological, connection between the would-be assassins' and Social-Democracy. To this day, however, nothing of the kind has been done, all we have been given has been empty words and accusations. Similarly, we hear the parrot-cry: 'The assassination attempts were instigated by the SocialDemocrats.' This is to accuse the Social-Democrats of 'being the party of regicides', etc.... We are quite unwilling to put up with the silence that has been maintained until this very day.... First and foremost, we are vitally concerned to know what is contained in the numerous records made in writing in connection with the assassination attempts. In particular, we insist on knowing what came to light during the extraordinarily numerous interrogations that took place in various parts of Germany of members of our party and non-party members, of men of the most diverse political leanings who had any connection, however remote, with the would-be assassins. We, upon whom the guilt and the responsibility is being foisted, insist that the matter be finally clarified. And this in particular as regards the last assassination attempt which was the immediate occasion of the fresh elections to the Reichstag and the submission of this Bill...

“I went away //from the Vorwärts where he had been making inquiries about Dr. Nobiling—this, late at night on the 2nd of June (1878)// very satisfied with what I had heard and, a few minutes later, came to a shop where, to my intense surprise, I found a despatch posted up which read:

“‘Berlin, 2 o’clock in the morning. In the course of a later judicial examination, the would-be assassin, Nobiling, confessed that he subscribed to socialist tendencies, also that he had repeatedly attended socialist meetings here and that he had, for a week or more, already been intending to shoot His Imperial Majesty because he regarded the removal of the Head of State to be in the interests of the public weal.’

“...The despatch that precipitated this piece of news into the world is explicitly designated an official one. Here, in my hand, I have the despatch which was officially delivered to the editorial board of the Kreuz-Zeitung with comments written by the Kreuz-Zeitung’s editor. There is not a shadow of doubt as to the official nature of this despatch. Now, sundry trustworthy reports have shown that Nobiling was not subjected to any kind of judicial examination on the day of the attempted assassination or in the course of the ensuing night, that nothing was ascertained that could in any way be seriously regarded as a clue to the murderer’s motives and his political convictions. Every one of you, Gentlemen, knows the nature of Wolffs Telegraphic Agency (Hear, hear!), everyone of you knows that despatches of this kind simply cannot go through without being officially approved. And that very word ‘official’ has, for good measure, been authoritatively appended to this despatch. Hence there can, in my view, be no doubt whatsoever that the said despatch was a deliberate and witting forgery on the part of the authorities, and was sent out into the world as such. (Hear, hear!) The despatch contains one of the most infamous calumnies ever to have been unloosed on the world from official sources and this, moreover, with the intention of casting the most odious suspicions on the whole of a large party, and of branding it as an accessory to a crime.

“Again, I would ask how it was possible that the government organs, the entire semi-official and official press and, in their wake, almost the whole of the rest of the press should, on the strength of the above-mentioned despatches, have been allowed, for weeks and months on end, to go on hitting out at us day after day in the most outrageous and libellous fashion; that it could, day after day, unloose upon the world the most hair-raising and disquieting accounts of plots discovered, fellow culprits, etc., without the government’s ever, etc.... Rather, the government did all in its power to disseminate and implant in the minds of an ever wider public a belief in the accuracy of the untrue allegations; and, up till this very hour, the government’s official representatives have not so much as deigned to cast any light whatsoever on the present obscurities....”

Bebel now turns to the question of harassment (p. 39, Column II).

“It is clear that every effort was made to provoke disturbances; the intention was to annoy us to the extreme, thus inciting us to acts of violence of one kind or another. The attempted assassinations were patently not enough. Had we been incited to acts of violence by that harassment, certain circles would have undoubtedly rejoiced at having been thus provided with an even greater wealth of material incriminating ourselves and hence with an excuse for the most drastic intervention, etc.” Thereupon Bebel demands “that the records should at long last be brought to light and that these be submitted, in printed form, to the Reichstag and in particular to the commission entrusted with the task of examining the Bill under discussion. The demand I am making here is similar to that which, a few days ago, during the debate on the Grosser Kurfürst disaster, was voiced, with complete justification and the assent of almost all sections of the House, with reference to the said disaster and which was expressly admitted to be allowable by the Minister for Naval Affairs (von Stosch), insofar as it lay within his competence (!).”

//Bebel’s request was greeted by the Reichstag with cries of “Quite right! Capital!”//

//And what was the Prussian government’s reply to this crushing accusation? With Eulenburg for its mouthpiece, it replied that it would not submit the records and that there was no incriminating material whatever to hand.//

Minister of the Interior, Count zu Eulenburg: “As regards the first point,”

//information obtained by the representatives of the federal governments, “concerning the examination to which the criminal, Nobiling, since deceased, was subjected”//.

1. “As regards the first point, I have to tell you that, if submission be demanded, it would be for the Prussian judiciary to give a ruling as to the feasibility or admissibility of disclosing the transactions of the proceedings that were instituted against Nobiling. This much, however, I am able to tell you, Gendemen, and that is that Nobiling was subjected to one examination and that, in the course of that examination, insofar as I have any knowledge of it, he stated that he had participated in Social-Democratic meetings and found the doctrines put forward there to his liking. Having regard to the fact that it is for the Prussian judiciary to give a ruling as to the submission of the files, I must refrain from giving any further information.”

//All that Eulenburg is actually saying is: 1. that “one” examination took place; he is careful not to say a “judicial” examination. Equally, he omits to say when that one examination took place (no doubt after the bullet that went through his head had blown out part of his brains).// But the words attributed by Eulenburg to Nobiling in the course of this “one” examination (assuming that Nobiling was in a condition to give an account of himself) prove, firstly, that he did not describe himself as a Social-Democrat, or as a member of the Social-Democratic Party; all he said was that he had attended some of the latter’s MEETINGS like many other philistines and had found “the doctrines put forward there to his liking”. Hence those doctrines were not his doctrines. His attitude towards them was that of a newcomer. Secondly, that he never suggested there was any connection between his “assassination attempt” and the MEETINGS or the doctrines put forward there.

But that is not the end of the curious tale: Mr. Eulenburg is fabricating the “this much” he is able to tell, or saying problematically “that, in the course of that examination, insofar as I have any knowledge of it, he stated”. According to this, therefore, Mr. Eulenburg has never seen the record; he knows it only from hearsay and can only tell as much “as has come to his knowledge in this way”. But he at once proceeds to give himself the lie. Having just told everything “insofar as he had any knowledge of it”, he goes on in his very next sentence to say:

“Having regard to the fact that it is for the Prussian judiciary to give a ruling as to the submission of the files, I must refrain from giving any further information.”

In other words, he would compromise the government were he to “give” what he knows.

Incidentally: If only one interrogation took place, we also know “when”, namely on the day when Nobiling was arrested with bullets in his brain and a sabre cut in the head, namely on the day, the same day that the notorious telegram was released, at 2 o’clock in the morning, on June 2. Later, however, the government sought to make the ultramontane party responsible for Nobiling. The interrogation, therefore, had revealed no connection of any description between Nobiling’s assassination attempt and the Social Democrats.

But Eulenburg has not yet concluded his confessions. He has to

“expressly point out that, as early as May, I stated from this place that the statement did not go so far as to say that these acts had been directly instigated by the Social-Democrats; neither am I now in a position to make such statement nor, indeed, to add anything new along the same lines.”

Bravo! Eulenburg roundly admits that, for all the disgraceful harassment by police and interrogators which took place between Hödel’s assassination attempt and the Reichstag MEETING, not one shred of factual evidence was produced in support of the government’s pet “theory” regarding the attempted assassinations!

Eulenburg and Co., whose tender “regard” for the powers of the “Prussian judiciary” is such that the latter is assumed, after Hödel’s decapitation and Nobiling’s death, to present an obstacle to submitting the “records” to the Reichstag, the investigation thus being closed for good, did not scruple on the very day of Nobiling’s assassination attempt, when the investigation of his case had barely begun, to issue a tendentiously worded “telegram”, purportedly about the initial interrogation of Nobiling, thereby evoking delirium tremens in the German philistines and causing their press to build an edifice of lies thereon! What respect for the judiciary and more particularly for the similarly accused government!

Having thus declared that there is no factual evidence arising out of these attempted assassinations upon which to base an accusation against the Social-Democrats—and therefore refused to produce the records which would cast a grotesque light on this abhorrent circumstance, Mr. Eulenburg proceeds to say that the Bill in fact rests simply upon a “theory”, the government’s theory that

“the line of vehement agitation adopted by Social-Democracy in the dissemination of its doctrines would be well-calculated to induce in unruly spirits the maturation of such tragic fruits as we, to our most profound regret, have had to witness.”

//Tragic fruits such as Sefeloge, Tschech, Schneider, Becker, Kullmann, Cohen (alias Blind)?//

“And I believe that in so saying, Gentlemen, I am still today of one mind with the entire German press,”

//i.e. insofar as it has been reptilized, i.e. with the single exception of independent papers of all complexions//

“with the sole exception of the Social-Democratic section thereof”.

(Outright lies, as before!)

//The meetings attended by Nobiling, like any other, took place under the supervision of a policeman; hence there was nothing insidious about them; the doctrines he listened to can only have related to the subjects on the agenda.//

After these factually false pronouncements about the “entire German press”, Mr. Eulenburg may be

“certain of encountering no contradiction from that quarter”.

In reply to Bebel, he has to “recall the attitude adopted towards these events by the Social-Democratic press” in order to prove “that Social-Democracy” does not, as it claims, “abhor murder in whatever guise”.

Proof:

1. “The organs of Social-Democracy began by trying to demonstrate that the attempted assassinations were a put-up job” (CROWN PRINCE).

//The Norddeutsche Allgemeine [Zeitung]’s complaints concerning the legal nature of German Social-Democratic agitation.//

2. “When they saw that this offered no means of escape..., they changed their tune and asserted that neither of the criminals could be held accountable, depicting them as isolated lunatics and their deeds as manifestations such as had always occurred from time to time in every era”

//haven’t they?//

“and for which no one could be held responsible.”

//(Proves love of “murder”.) (Many non-Social-Democratic journals did the same.)//

Instead of producing the “records” of which, according to his previous statement, he has no knowledge—or must, out of regard for the “Prussian judiciary”, refrain from blabbing about—Mr. Eulenburg now demands that credence be attached, on the grounds of these “records” withheld by him, to the following:

“Gentlemen, the investigation which has been carried out has not yielded the slightest indication that the two men were in any way incapable of reflecting upon the consequences and implications of their acts. On the contrary, all that it has been possible to establish is that they were fully accountable for their actions and, in the latter case, //not, then, in that of the executed man, Hödel?// acted with deliberate malice aforethought such as has seldom been seen before.”

3. “There has been a tendency in many of the organs of Social-Democracy to excuse these actions, to exculpate their perpetrators. Not they, but society”

//they were exculpated by the government in that the latter does not hold them responsible but “the doctrines of Social-Democracy” and the agitators of the working class—i.e. one section of society and its “doctrines”—//

“was held responsible for the crimes”

//i.e. the exculpation was not extended to the acts, otherwise they would not have been regarded as “crimes”, and the question of “guilt” would not have been discussed at all//

“which had been committed.”

{Quotes from Vorwärts* with complete justification, with reference to Hödel.)

After all this clap-trap:

4. “Side by side with this, Gentlemen, there appeared comments on the heinous acts perpetrated or attempted against high-ranking officials in Russia. With reference to Vera Zasulich’s assassination attempt”

//the St. Petersburg jury and the press throughout the world!!//

“and the murder of General Mezentsov”

//more about this below, re Bismarck//

“you will have seen in a paper published here the question: ‘Well, what else could they have done? What other recourse did they have?’”

5. “Finally, Social-Democracy abroad has explicitly and in so many words expressed its sympathy with these acts. The Congress of the Jura Federation, which met at Fribourg in July of this year, explicitly declared the acts of Hödel and Nobiling to be revolutionary acts which had its full sympathy, etc.”

But is German Social-Democracy “responsible” for the statements and MOVEMENTS of a clique hostile to it whose “assassinations” and [the like] in Italy, Switzerland, Spain //likewise Russia: Nechayev// have hitherto been confined exclusively to members of “the Marxian tendency”?

//In referring to these same anarchists, Mr. Eulenburg had already remarked that one had had to relinquish the view that

“the attempted assassinations were a put-up job”, “when even Social-Democratic organs abroad—I shall presently provide an example of this—expressed the conviction that nothing of the kind was the case”;

he forgets to provide “the example”.//

There now follows a fine passage on

the “Marxian tendency” and the “tendency of the so-called Anarchists”

(p. 51, Column I). They are different, but

“it cannot be denied that there is a certain” (what? hostile) “connection between all these associations”

as, indeed, there is a certain connection between all the manifestations of one and the same epoch. If they want to make a cas pendable of this “connection”, they must first of all show it to have a distinctive character, and not rest content with a phrase that is applicable to anything and everything in the universe where a “certain” connection exists between absolutely everything. The “Marxian tendency” has demonstrated that there is a definite connection between the “Anarchists’ “ doctrines and actions and those of the European “police”. When the details of this connection were exposed in the report The Alliance, etc., the entire reptilian and respectable press held its peace. These “revelations” did not fit in with their idea of a “connection”. (Hitherto this clique has confined its attempted murders solely to members of the “Marxian” tendency.)

After this faux fuyant Mr. Eulenburg proceeds, via an unobtrusive “and”, to tack on a sentence which seeks to demonstrate the said “connection” by means of a false locus communis and one, moreover, that was expressed in an exceptionally “critical” form:

“...and”, he goes on, “and in such movements, experience based upon the law of gravity” //a movement may be based on the law of gravity, e.g. the movement of a fall, but an experience is based prima facie only on the phenomenon of the fall//

“has shown that more extreme tendencies”

//e.g. self-mutilation in Christianity//

“gradually gain the upper hand, and that the more moderate ones are unable to hold their own against them.”

Firstly, to say that in historical movements it is the so-called extreme tendencies in any timely movement that gain the upper hand,— Luther versus Thomas Münzer, the Puritans versus the LEVELLERS, the Jacobins versus the Hébertistes 30°—is a false locus communis. History proves precisely the opposite. Secondly, however, the “anarchist” tendency is not an “extreme tendency” of German Social-Democracy,— something which Eulenburg should prove rather than insinuate. What is involved in the one case is the genuine historical movement of the working class; the other is a phantom of a jeunesse sans issue intent on making history, and merely shows how the ideas of French socialism are caricatured in the hommes déclassés of the upper classes. As a result, anarchism has suffered an almost universal eclipse, and continues to exist only where there is as yet no proper workers’ movement. This is a fact.

All that Mr. Eulenburg proves is how dangerous it can be when the “police” take to “philosophising”.

See the immediately ensuing sentence (Column I, p. 51) in which Eulenburg speaks quasi re bene gesta.

He now seeks to prove that “the doctrines and objectives of Social-Democracy are harmful in all respects”! And how? With three quotations.

But first let us look at the splendid way in which he makes the transition:

“And if you take a somewhat closer look at these doctrines and objectives of Social-Democracy, you will find that the objective is not, as said just now, peaceful development, but that peaceful development is only a stage intended to lead on to the final objectives which are unattainable by any means other than those of force.”

//In the same way, perhaps, as the “National Association” was a “stage” intended to lead on to the forcible Prussification of Germany,— that’s how Mr. Eulenburg looks at the matter [with] “Blood and Iron”.//

If one takes the first part of the sentence, what he is saying is merely a tautology or an absurdity: If development has an “objective” — “final objectives”—then those “objectives” are its “objectives”, the nature of the development being neither “peaceful” nor otherwise. What Eulenburg is in fact trying to say is: Peaceful development towards an objective is only a stage which is intended to lead on to the forcible development of the objective, and indeed, according to Mr. Eulenburg, this subsequent change from “peaceful” to “forcible” development is inherent in the objective it is seeking to attain. The objective in the case under consideration is the emancipation of the working class and the revolution (transformation) of society implicit therein. An historical development can remain “peaceful” only for so long as its progress is not forcibly obstructed by those wielding social power at the time. If in England, for instance, or the United States, the working class were to gain a majority in PARLIAMENT or CONGRESS, they could, by lawful means, rid themselves of such laws and institutions as impeded their development, though they could only do so insofar as society had reached a sufficiently mature development. However, the “peaceful” movement might be transformed into a “forcible” one by resistance on the part of those interested in restoring the former state of affairs; if (as in the American Civil War and French Revolution) they are put down by force, it is as rebels against “lawful” force.

But what Eulenburg advocates is forcible reaction on the part of those in power against development while still at the “peaceful stage”, and this for the purpose of preventing subsequent “forcible” conflicts; the war cry of forcible counter-revolution against actually “peaceful” development; indeed, the government is seeking to suppress by force a development it dislikes but cannot lawfully attack. This is the necessary prelude to forcible revolutions.

It is an old story

which yet remains eternally new.

Mr. Eulenburg now adduces three quotations in proof of Social-Democracy’s doctrines of force:

1. In his work on capital, Marx says: “Our aims etc.”

//But “our” aims is said, not in the name of German Social-Democracy, but in that of the Communist Party.// The passage is not from Capital which appeared in 1867, but from the Communist Manifesto which had appeared in “1847”, i.e. twenty years before the “German Social-Democracy” was actually formed.

2. And in another passage, which is quoted in Mr. Bebel’s work, Unsere Ziele, we read, as an assertion made by Marx:

//He [Eulenburg] himself, who quotes from Capital a passage that is not in it, naturally quotes passage that does appear in it as an assertion quoted elsewhere. (Cf. passage in Capital, 2nd edition)// But the passage in Bebel runs:

“Thus we see that force plays its role at various periods of history, and it is probably not without good reason that K. Marx (in his book, ‘Das Kapital’ in which he depicts the course of development of capitalist production) exclaims: ‘Force is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one. It is itself an economic power’.”

3. Quotation from Bebel: What Unsere Ziele (Column I, p. 51) quotes is, in fact, the following:

“The course of this development depends on the intensity (power) with which the circles involved take hold of the movement; it depends on the resistance encountered by the movement from its opponents. Of one thing we may be sure: The more vigorous the resistance, the more forcibly will the new conditions be brought about The problem will not at all be solved by a sprinkling of rose water.”

//Eulenburg quotes this from BebeVs “Unsere Ziele”. It is to be found on p. 16, see passage side-lined on p. 16, ditto 15; see ditto, passage side-lined, p. 43.// Again “falsified” because quoted out of context.

After this forceful performance, see the puerile and selfdemolishing twaddle about Bismarck’s “contacts” with the “leaders of Social-Democracy” (p. 51, Column II).

At the same sitting:

Stolberg’s speech was followed by Reichensperger’s. His chief fear—that the law whereby everything was made subject to the police be also applied to other parties displeasing to the government; in addition, unending Catholic balderdash. (See side-lined passages, pp. 30-35).

Reichensperger was followed by von Helldorff-Bedra. Utterly naive:

“Gentlemen, the present law has the character of a preventive law in the most eminent sense of the word; it contains no penal clauses, but simply empowers the police to issue prohibitions and attaches penalties to infringements of these patently unmistakable prohibitions” (p. 36, Column I).

//It allows only the police to prohibit everything and does not punish the infringement of any law, but rather the “infringement” of the police ukase. A highly successful way of rendering penal laws superfluous.//

The “danger”, admits Mr. von Helldorff, lies in the electoral victories of the Social-Democrats which were not even prejudiced by the harassment consequent upon the assassination attempts! That calls for disciplinary action. Use of general suffrage in a manner displeasing to the government! (36, Column II).

However, the laddie concedes that Reichensperger is right and the “Complaints office”, the “Federal Council Commission”, nonsense.

“The only question to be settled here is one that concerns the police, and to circumscribe such an authority by guaranteeing rights—quite definitely wrong”; abuse can be combatted by showing “confidence in politically highly placed officials” (37, I and II). Demands “amendment of our suffrage” (38, I).