登陆注册
15456500000006

第6章 I. GERMANY AT THE OUTBREAK OF THE REVOLUTION.(4)

The working class in Germany is, in its social and political development, as far behind that of England and France as the German bourgeoisie is behind the bourgeoisie of those countries. Like master, like man. The evolution of the conditions of existence for a numerous, strong, concentrated, and intelligent proletarian class goes hand in hand with the development of the conditions of existence for a numerous, wealthy, concentrated, and powerful middle class. The working class movement itself never is independent, never is of an exclusively proletarian character until all the different factions of the middle class, and particularly its most progressive faction, the large manufacturers, have conquered political power, and remodelled the State according to their wants. It is then that the inevitable conflict between the employer and the employed becomes imminent, and cannot be adjourned any longer; that the working class can no longer be put off with delusive hopes and promises never to be realized;that the great problem of the nineteenth century, the abolition of the proletariat, is at last brought forward fairly and in its proper light. Now, in Germany the mass of the working class were employed, not by those modern manufacturing lords of which Great Britain furnishes such splendid specimens, but by small tradesmen, whose entire manufacturing system is a mere relic of the Middle Ages. And as there is an enormous difference between the great cotton lord and the petty cobbler or master tailor, so there is a corresponding distance from the wide-awake factory operative of modern manufacturing Babylons to the bashful journeyman tailor or cabinetmaker of a small country town, who lives in circumstances and works after a plan very little different from those of the like sort of men some five hundred years ago. This general absence of modern conditions of life, of modern modes of industrial production, of course was accompanied by a pretty equally general absence of modern ideas, and it is, therefore, not to be wondered at if, at the outbreak of the Revolution, a large part of the working classes should cry out for the immediate re-establishment of guilds and Mediaeval privileged trades' corporations. Yet from the manufacturing districts, where the modern system of production predominated, and in consequence of the facilities of inter-communication and mental development afforded by the migratory life of a large number of the working men, a strong nucleus formed itself, whose ideas about the emancipation of their class were far clearer and more in accordance with existing facts and historical necessities; but they were a mere minority. If the active movement of the middle class may be dated from 1840, that of the working class commences its advent by the insurrections of the Silesian and Bohemian factory operatives in 1844, and we shall soon have occasion to pass in review the different stages through which this movement passed.

Lastly, there was the great class of the small farmers, the peasantry, which with its appendix of farm laborers, constitutes a considerable majority of the entire nation. Rut this class again sub-divided itself into different fractions. There were, firstly, the more wealthy farmers, what is called in Germany Gross and Mittel-Bauern, proprietors of more or less extensive farms, and each of them commanding the services of several agricultural laborers. This class, placed between the large untaxed feudal landowners, and the smaller peasantry and farm laborers, for obvious reasons found in an alliance with the antifeudal middle class of the towns its most natural political course. Then there were, secondly, the small freeholders, predominating in the Rhine country, where feudalism had succumbed before the mighty strokes of the great French Revolution. Similar independent small freeholders also existed here and there in other provinces, where they had succeeded in buying off the feudal charges formerly due upon their lands. This class, however, was a class of freeholders by name only, their property being generally mortgaged to such an extent, and under such onerous conditions, that not the peasant, but the usurer who had advanced the money, was the real landowner. Thirdly, the feudal tenants, who could not be easily turned out of their holdings, but who had to pay a perpetual rent, or to perform in perpetuity a certain amount of labor in favor of the lord of the manor. Lastly, the agricultural laborers, whose condition, in many large farming concerns was exactly that of the same class in England, and who in all cases lived and died poor, ill-fed, and the slaves of their employers. These three latter classes of the agricultural population, the small freeholders, the feudal tenants, and the agricultural laborers, never troubled their heads much about politics before the Revolution, but it is evident that this event must have opened to them a new career, full of brilliant prospects. To every one of them the Revolution offered advantages, and the movement once fairly engaged in, it was to be expected that each, in their turn, would join it. But at the same time it is quite as evident, and equally borne out by the history of all modern countries, that the agricultural population, in consequence of its dispersion over a great space, and of the difficulty of bringing about an agreement among any considerable portion of it, never can attempt a successful independent movement; they require the initiatory impulse of the more concentrated, more enlightened, more easily moved people of the towns.

The preceeding short sketch of the most important of the classes, which in their aggregate formed the German nation at the outbreak of the recent movements, will already be sufficient to explain a great part of the incoherence, incongruence, and apparent contradiction which prevailed in that movement.

When interests so varied, so conflicting, so strangely crossing each other, are brought into violent collision; when these contending interests in every district, every province, are mixed in different proportions; when, above all, there is no great centre in the country, no London, no Paris, the decisions of which. by their weight, may supersede the necessity of fighting out the same quarrel over and over again in every single locality; what else is to be expected but that the contest will dissolve itself into a mass of unconnected struggles, in which an enormous quantity of blood, energy, and capital is spent, but which for all that remain without any decisive results?

The political dismemberment of Germany into three dozen of more or less important principalities is equally explained by this confusion and multiplicity of the elements which compose the nation. and which again vary in every locality. Where there are no common interests there call he no unity of purpose, much less of action. The German confederation, it is true, was declared everlastingly indissoluble; yet the Confederation, and its organ, the Diet, never represented German unity. The very highest pitch to which centralization was ever carried in Germany was the establishment of the Zollverein; by this the States on the North Sea were also forced into a Customs Union of their own, Austria remaining wrapped up in her separate prohibitive tariff. Germany had the satisfaction to be, for all practical purposes divided between three independent powers only, instead of between thirty-six. Of course the paramount supremacy of the Russian Czar, as established in 1814, underwent no change on this account.

Having drawn these preliminary conclusions from our premises, we shall see, in our next, how the aforesaid various classes of the German people were set into movement one after the other, and what character the movement assumed on the outbreak of the French Revolution of 1848.

LONDON, September, 1851.

同类推荐
  • War of the Classes

    War of the Classes

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。
  • Within the Law

    Within the Law

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。
  • 后鉴录

    后鉴录

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。
  • 溪山琴况

    溪山琴况

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。
  • 岁除日奉推事使牒追

    岁除日奉推事使牒追

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。
热门推荐
  • 换我一世再爱你

    换我一世再爱你

    一个仙草镇天天潇洒自在、率猫逗狗的女混混,在一次邪魔入侵仙草镇后,奇异的变成了男的,这是我吗?我是谁?奶奶的,我不要这样。她一边想着变回女儿身,那才是真的她,可却因为因缘际会,陷入仙侠世界,未来的迷蒙世界会有怎样的奇遇,而她亦遇见自己最爱的人,换我一世再爱你。
  • 绝对娇妻:遵命我的总裁大人

    绝对娇妻:遵命我的总裁大人

    白小凡是一个会隐身术的女孩,仗着自己会点隐身术,赖在一个陌生男子的别墅白吃白喝,胡作非为......等她做尽所有恶作剧之后......秦炎你个魂淡,原来你一直都能看得到。偷吃你披萨的时候,你在装瞎子;撞见你换衣服的时候,你竟然还在装瞎子;我在洗澡的时候,你特么还在装瞎子看不见......哎,想想就来气,自己干了这么多蠢事都还不知道,还把自己搭进去了......
  • 终极系列之夏美的后宫

    终极系列之夏美的后宫

    大家都认为夏美是机车的女孩,我看可我看她却不是。看见夏美恢复正常时,收得各个时空的美男。
  • 希望村

    希望村

    希望村名叫希望村,可是这个地方从来没有希望,人们抱着愚昧的念想活着,看似铺满阳光,实际上却在地狱里挣扎,也许是挣扎的时间太长了,人们就忘了挣扎,安安心心生活在囚笼里,直到死的那一天,也不知道自己为什么活过。有些人生下来,就是为了等死......
  • 冥罗天诛

    冥罗天诛

    穿越附身于前伯爵公子之身,王岩刻苦修炼期望能在这魔法文明中拥有不一样的人生。可冥冥之中世界的诸多变化及谜团却不断推动着他前进:伯爵府的神兵背后,冥羅斗气的灭绝之路,漆黑之力的黑暗起源等等,在各势力的角力之中,王岩能否得到不一样的未来?
  • 仙侠奇缘之刻骨铭心

    仙侠奇缘之刻骨铭心

    简介,她是上古女神,却因意外坠落凡间,他是六界上仙却因一个女子而神女转世在千年以前一个宁静的小山村炊烟袅袅,一座普通的茅舍,屋内突然响起一妇人的惨叫声,一位大约三十多岁的中年男子证忙推门而入,急切的唤道,娘子你怎么了?妇人答道肚子痛的很历害,好像是要生了,那可如何是好......
  • 不炼长生

    不炼长生

    你愿求长生寂寞,还是选一世风光。不论作何选择,都免不了红尘中一炼。你坚守自己的初心,可还能实现自己的愿望?你达成了自己的目标,可还记得曾经的初心!
  • 六龙皇朝

    六龙皇朝

    我本华东一布衣,世界与我有何甘。废材修炼,独霸大陆,不是世界太弱小,而是主角太强大,跟随主角的脚步进入玄幻世界吧。
  • TFBOYS之小时候的约定

    TFBOYS之小时候的约定

    他们从小就认识,可是因为一些事情他们不得不分开,女孩因为家里的事去了国外,留下男孩一个人,女孩走之前告诉男孩:“我一定会回来找你的,你等我”男孩因为这一句话等了十年,十年后女孩回来了,可是男孩已经跟小时候的他不一样了,男孩跟另外两个男孩组了一个组合,进了娱乐圈,想知道后来发生了什么吗?那就看看我的小说吧,嘿嘿。。。
  • 阴阳鬼道长

    阴阳鬼道长

    鬼气缠身的道教天才杨凡,入世后与鬼、人、僵尸,鬼王斗,携手校花,警花共创一番新天地,创建人间、鬼界的新秩序。这是一个热血、励志的故事。在这个世界里,在我们的热血青春里,我们都不平凡,我们都是——杨凡!