Karl Marx: A Biography

COLOGNE

Count Brandenburg, illegitimate son of Frederick William II and an
energetic conservative, and on 9 November the Prussian Assembly was
transferred to the small provincial town of Brandenburg. At first it refused
to move and had to be hounded ignominiously from one hall to another;
but finally it agreed, merely appealing to the people not to pay their taxes
as a protest.
These events marked the definite end of any revolutionary prospect
for Germany. In response to the new situation there was a sharp change
in the content and editorial policies of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung: much
less space was given to purely political questions and more to problems
of direct concern to the working class; the notion of class struggle was
much more to the fore and the whole tone became more radical. Owing
to the depletion in the paper's staff Marx wrote more of the articles
himself. He appears to have believed, for a moment at least, in the
possible success of an armed uprising. On 1 November the paper carried
an appeal, inserted independently of the editorial board, for arms and
volunteers for Vienna. On 6 November Marx himself announced the fall
of Vienna to a sombre meeting of the Workers' Association and laid
the blame for Windischgratz's victory on 'the manifold treachery of the
Viennese bourgeoisie'.^48 He elaborated this accusation in the article,
'Victory of the Counter-Revolution in Vienna', published in the Neue
Rheinische Zeitung on 7 November. The article ended:

Granted that the counter-revolution is alive throughout Europe thanks

to weapons, it will die throughout Europe thanks to money. The destiny

that will abolish victory is European bankruptcy, State bankruptcy.

Bayonet tips break on economic 'points' like dry tinder.... The useless

butcheries of the June and October days, the wearisome feast of victims

since February and March, the cannibalism of the counter-revolution

will itself convince the people that there is only one means to shorten,

simplify and concentrate the death agony of the old society and the

bloody birth pangs of the new, one means only - revolutionary

terrorism.^49

And when it seemed that the Civil Guard in Berlin might refuse to
surrender their weapons and support the Assembly, Marx proclaimed: 'It
is the duty of the Rhine Province to hasten to the aid of the Berlin
National Assembly with men and arms.'^50
On 18 November the Committee of Rhineland Democrats proclaimed
a three-point programme signed by Marx, Schapper and Schneider. It
was published in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung and led to Marx's subsequent
prosecution. The programme consisted in: resistance to tax collection;
the organisation of a popular levy 'for defence against the enemy' (and