Karl Marx: A Biography

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192 KARL MARX: A BIOGRAPHY

revolution.'^60 But Marx now despaired of the impetus for such a social-

republican revolution arising from inside Germany: it could only be

produced by an external shock. This was the programme for 1849 that

he sketched out on 1 January:

The liberation of Europe ... is dependent on a successful uprising by

the French working class. But every French social upheaval necessarily

founders on the English bourgeoisie, on the industrial and commercial

world-domination of Great Britain. Every partial social reform in

France and on the European continent in general is and remains, in as

far as it aims at being definitive, an empty pious hope. And old England

will only be overthrown by a world war, which is the only thing that

could provide the Chartists, the organised party of the English workers,

with the conditions for a successful rising against their gigantic

oppressors. The Chartists at the head of the English government -

only at that moment does the idea of a social revolution leave the realm

of Utopia for that of reality. But every European war which involves

England is a world war. And a European war will be the first result of

a successful workers' revolution in France. As in Napoleon's time,

England will be at the head of the counter-revolutionary armies, but

will be precipitated to the front of the revolutionary movement by the

war itself and thus redeem its guilt against the revolution of the 18th

century. Revolutionary uprising of the French working class, world war

• that is the programme for the year 1849.^61

But however much Marx might see world war as the solution to
Germany's problems, there was still the more immediate question of the
elections to be held under the new Constitution at the end of February.
The problems of the previous May arose again: to participate or not to
participate. And Marx's answer, despite his drastically changed attitude
to the bourgeoisie, was still the same. When Anneke proposed in the
committee meeting of 15 January that the Workers' Association put up
its own candidates, the minutes record Marx as saying that

the Workers' Association as such could not run any candidates at the

present moment; nor was it a question for the present of maintaining

certain principles, but of opposing the government, absolutism and

feudal domination; and for this even simple democrats, so-called

liberals, were sufficient as they were in any event far from satisfied with

the present government. One had simply to take matters as they were.

The important thing was to create as strong an opposition as possible

to the present absolutist regime; it was therefore common sense, since

they could not secure the victory of their own principles in the elections,

to unite with another opposition party to prevent the victory of their

common enemy, absolute monarchy.^62