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This study explores German and English revolutionary discourse

between 1819 and 1848 / 49. This period was marked by dramatic Raphael Hörmann
social and economic transformations and witnessed a pronounced
discursive shift from political to social revolution. Writing the
Revolution engages with literary authors, radical journalists, early Writing the Revolution
proletarian pamphleteers and political theorists. It traces radical
demands for social liberation on the one hand, and liberal fears of German and English Radical Literature,
the spectre of proletarian revolution on the other. The book argues 1819 –– 1848/49
that these ideological battles generated a compelling ““poetics of
revolution.””
Raphael Hörmann is postdoctoral researcher in Comparative
Literature and Cultural History at the Justus-Liebig-University
Giessen, working on a project that investigates Gothic narratives

Hörmann
of the Haitian Revolution. He has published widely on nineteenth-
century German and English revolutionary texts and is the co-
editor (together with Gesa Mackenthun) of Human Bondage in the
Cultural Contact Zone: Transdisciplinary Perspectives on Slavery and

Writing the Revolution

its Discourses (Münster, etc.: Waxmann, 2010).

LIT
978-3-643-90134-7

LIT
www.lit-verlag.ch 9*ukdzfe#.-ycvm* LIT
15. September 2011
 Raphael Hörmann

Writing the Revolution

Kulturgeschichtliche Perspektiven

herausgegeben von

Martin Baumeister
und
Eckhart Hellmuth

Band 10

LIT
 Raphael Hörmann

Writing the Revolution

German and English Radical Literature,
1819 – 1848/49

LIT
 Umschlagbild: Thibault: La barricade de la rue Saint-Maur-Popincourt
avant l’attaque par les troupes du général Lamoricière, le
dimanche 25 juin 1848
Urhebervermerk bpk / RMN / Musé d’Orsay / Thibault

Satz: Jens Kretschmer

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Contents

Acknowledgments ............................................................................................ 9

Introduction .................................................................................................. 11

1. Transforming Theoretical Perspectives:

Radical Literature, Revolutionary Discourse,
and the Transition from Political to Social Revolution ..................... 27

1.1 Challenging Boundaries:

Literature, the Nonfictional Discourse, and the Social Material .......... 27
1.1.1 ‘Literature’ and its Critics:
Constructs of Bourgeois Idealist Ideology .......................................... 27
1.1.2 Culture as Text? The Pitfalls of ‘Cultural Immaterialism’ .................... 30
1.2 Base and Superstructure Revisited ...................................................... 39
1.2.1 The Dialectics of Marx’s Base-Superstructure Analogy ........................ 39
1.2.2 Excavating the Social Material? The Role of Ideological
Forms in Marx’s ‘Science’ of History and Revolution ......................... 46
1.2.3 Social Discourse – Social Consciousness – Social Change?
Revolutionary Discourse as an Ideological Form ................................ 53
1.2.4 Literature as Part of the ‘Social Totality’ ............................................. 58
1.3 From ‘Political’ to ‘Social Revolution’:
The Major Paradigm Shift in the Radical Discourse ........................... 62
1.3.1 The Socio-Revolutionary Turn:
Political, Social Revolution and Social Reform ................................... 62
1.3.2 The Dialectics of Political and Social Revolution ................................ 70
1.3.3 Marx’s Attack on Ruge:
The Aporia of an Idealist Conception of Social Revolution ................ 76
1.3.4 “Die Waffe der Kritik” against “die Kritik der Waffen”:
The Dialectics of Socio-Revolutionary Theory and Practice ................ 78
1.3.5 “Eine Protestation des Menschen gegen das entmenschte
Leben”: Marx’s Conception of Proletarian Social Revolution
as a Struggle against Alienation .......................................................... 82
1.3.6 Proletarian Social Revolution:
A Spectre of Anarchy or Vision of Universal Emancipation? ............... 88

2. Charting the Limits of Political Revolution: The Peterloo

Massacre (1819), Shelley and British Radical Discourse ................... 91

2.1 Political, Social, and Moral Revolution:

The Stakes in Shelley’s Dilemma ........................................................ 91
2.2 Social Revolution at the Crossroads of Republicanism
and Socialism ................................................................................... 101
2.2.1 Shelley’s Revolutionary Paradoxes ..................................................... 101
2.2.2 Tom Paine’s Rights of Man (1791/92):
A Foundational Text for Political Revolution .................................... 102
2.2.3. The Aporias of Political Revolution in Shelley’s 1819/20s Texts ........ 105
2.3 The Ethics of Proletarian Resistance: Moral or Physical Force? ......... 115
2.3.1 Passive or Violent Resistance to Social Exploitation?
Richard Carlile and Shelley .............................................................. 115
2.3.2 “[T]heir yokes they’d break”:
Blandford’s Call for Forceful Social Revolution
in “A Real Dream: Or, Another Hint for Mr. Bull!!” (1819)
and The Mask of Anarchy ................................................................. 125
2.4 “Song to the Men of England” vs. The Mask of Anarchy:
The Limits of Moral Revolution and the Collapse
of the ‘Moral Economy’ ................................................................... 129
2.5 “We Have Eaten From the Tree of Knowledge”:
Emerging Proletarian Consciousness and the Bourgeois
Didactics of Revolution ................................................................... 143
3. The Social Turn in Revolutionary Ideology during
the 1830s and early 1840s: Heine, Börne, Beddoes,
and Büchner .................................................................................... 149

3.1 The Socio-Historical Background and Revolutionary

Ideology in 1830s Europe ................................................................ 149
3.2 A Social Revolution Without the Proletariat?
The Myth of Heine as a Socio-Revolutionary Author ....................... 156
3.2.1 A Programme of Proletarian Social Revolution?
Heine’s Manifesto of Sensual Liberation in Zur Geschichte
der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland (1835)
and its Early Socialist Critics ............................................................ 156
3.2.2 Prophesying the Social Revolution:
Heine as a Precursor to Marx? .......................................................... 179
3.2.3 “Wie wilde Tiere […] fiel das Volk über sie herüber”:
Images of Proletarian Savagery ......................................................... 188
3.2.4 Heine’s Ludwig Börne: Eine Denkschrift (1840):
A Polemic against Proletarian Social Revolution ............................... 203
3.2.5 “Ein Fluch dem König, dem König der Reichen”:
Heine’s “Die Armen Weber” (1844) as a Call for Proletarian
Social Revolution? ............................................................................ 208
3.3 “Der Krieg der Armen gegen die Reichen”:
Börne’s Shifting Perspective on Proletarian Social Revolution ........... 233
3.4 “With upright Toasting Fork and Toothless Cat”:
The Impending Proletarian Revolt Against the Effete
Bourgeoisie in Beddoes and Büchner ............................................... 252

4. The Drama of Class Struggle and Social Revolution:

Marx, Georg Weerth and the Evolution of a Socialist
Poetics of Revolution ...................................................................... 264

4.1 Proletarian Tragedy and Social Consciousness .................................. 264

4.1.1 Tragic and Anti-tragic Proletarian Social Consciousness ................... 264
4.1.2 Engels, Weerth and Heß: Or the Condition and
Consciousness of the English and German Working Class ............... 272
4.1.3 “Und wußte nicht warum”: The Tragic Lack of Social
Consciousness in Weerth’s “Es war ein armer Schneider” (1845) ...... 280
4.1.4 Anagnorisis, Catharsis, Peripeteia in the Proletarian
Revolutionary Drama ....................................................................... 287
4.1.5 “Glück auf, Silesia”:
International Proletarian Solidarity and Social Consciousness .......... 301
4.2 The Revolutionary Drama between Tragedy and Farce:
Marx’s and Weerth’s Poetics of the Revolutions of 1848/49 .............. 307
4.2.1 Marx’s Shifting Poetics of Revolution from 1848 to 1852 ................ 307
4.2.2 The Farce of Chartism According to Weerth:
The Betrayal of Britain’s Socio-Revolutionary Proletariat
in 1848 ............................................................................................ 322
4.2.3 Marx, Weerth, and the Farce of the German Bourgeoisie
in 1848 ............................................................................................ 329
4.2.4 Towards a New Poetics of Social Revolution: 1848/49 as
Tragedy and Anti-Tragedy ................................................................ 342

Conclusion .................................................................................................. 357

Bibliography ................................................................................................ 361

Acknowledgments

I like to thank the various people and agencies that have provided vital help during
various stages of this research and book project. First of all, I am greatly thank-
ful to my thesis supervisors, Professor Mark Ward and Dr. Laura Martin. Laura’s
pragmatic and practical advice and assistance proved very helpful for overcoming
all major obstacles in the course of my PhD studies at the University of Glasgow.
Mark was not only a tireless proofreader at various stages of the thesis, but his great
enthusiasm with which he supported my project was a continuous source of inspi-
ration and encouragement throughout the writing and revising process.
I would also like to thank Ross E. Halvorsen whose has been a superb copy-
editor of the book-manuscript, providing me with very constructive criticism. The
same applies to my friend and fellow PhD-student Eugene de Klerk, who was
much more than a mere proofreader. His extremely insightful and astute criticism
often caused me to rethink and reformulate my argument. Moreover, he has been
a great friend throughout and was always there when ‘the Beast’ proved a tough
enemy. I would also like to thank my friend Meggie Hiley for proofreading parts
of the manuscript.
In respect to revising this thesis I am also thankful to my examiners Dr. Barbara
Burns and Professor Martin Swales for their very diligent corrections and thought-
provoking comments and suggestions. A very special thanks goes out to Dr. Terence
Holmes. Extremely kindly, he agreed to labour through the entire revised thesis,
providing me with extremely valuable feedback and incisive comments. Regarding
my research on Georg Weerth, Dr. Bernd Füllner of the Heinrich-Heine-Institut
in Düsseldorf has been very helpful. Not only did he kindly provide me with an
electronic draft copy of the brilliant new edition of Georg Weerth’s works he has
been working on, but also his enthusiasm for this unjustly neglected revolutionary
writer has been inspirational.
Regarding financial assistance, I am indebted to the AHRC (Arts and Humani-
ties Research Council) for a tuition fees scholarship and the Faculty of Arts at the
University of Glasgow for a Postgraduate Scholarship. I am further grateful to the
German Research Foundation (DFG) and the selection committee of the gradu-
ate school “Cultural Encounters and the Discourses of Scholarship” (University of
10

Rostock) for choosing me as a post-doctoral research fellow. This scholarship has

given me the opportunity to radically rewrite and revise the original thesis. How-
ever, my greatest and warmest thanks as monetary assistance is concerned, go out
to my late grandma Maria Hennig. Her generous financial support enabled me to
write my PhD-thesis and subsequently publish this book.
I am also grateful to my parents Barbara and Henning who have kindled in me
an enduring love for literature and exposed me to radical political music from an
early age. The ‘exchange of thoughts’ with my friend and colleague Michael Frank
has been extremely stimulating and invaluable. I am very grateful to my friends in
Scotland Ben Ward, Eleanor MacDonald and my former partner Chantal Riekel
who all cheered me up when I was struggling with the “angry weavers.” In Rostock
I want to thank my friends and colleagues from the graduate school Christian
Kothe, Sarah Ross, Gabriele Richter and Silke Hoklas, whose friendship has been
greatly appreciated, not at least when navigating the sometimes choppy waters of
academia. Finally, I like to dedicate this thesis to all my good friends for their en-
during friendship over the years.
Introduction

This study examines the impact that certain paradigm shifts in revolutionary dis-
course had on mid-19th-century radical German and British literature. While it
focuses on the discursive and ideological transition from a concept of a merely
political nature to one of social revolution, the study, at the same time, takes the
contemporary socio-historical developments as the decisive factors that condition
the evolution of revolutionary discourse. It subscribes to a cultural-materialist ap-
proach and presupposes that social and economic forces form the basis for any
cultural production. Therefore these economic forces must be more seriously con-
sidered than as just some vague ‘social background’ or ‘context’ when analysing the
actual aesthetic artefacts.
One might argue that for a contribution to 21st-century humanities, such an
endeavour seems oddly old-fashioned, reminiscent of dogmatic 1970s Marxism
and of a rigid social historical approach that has been long superseded by the lib-
erating and refreshingly non-dogmatic perspective of contemporary cultural stud-
ies. The ‘cultural turn,’ as it is commonly viewed, has revolutionised not only the
humanities but has also had a profound impact on the social sciences. The sociolo-
gist Victoria E. Bonnell and the historian Lynn Hunt even argue that the ‘cultural
turn,’ in conjunction with the political decline of communism, has delivered the
coup de grâce to Marxist social constructivism in the social sciences, replacing it
with the anything-goes-attitude of cultural history and cultural studies:

The cultural turn and a more general postmodernist critique of knowl-

edge have contributed, perhaps decisively, to the enfeebling of paradigms
for social scientific research. In the face of these intellectual trends and the
collapse of communist systems in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet
Union, Marxism as an interpretative and political paradigm has suffered a
serious decline. The failure of Marxism has signaled a more general failure
of all paradigms. Are the social sciences becoming a branch of a more gen-
eral interpretative, even literary activity – just another cultural study with
claims only for individual authorial virtuosity rather than for a more gener-
ally valid, shared knowledge? (Bonnell & Hunt 1999, 4)
12

This post-Marxist move away from the social and towards ‘culture’ has had an even
deeper impact on the humanities. Much more so than the social sciences, the hu-
manities have traditionally been very suspicious of any theory that posits a social
conditioning of culture and thus have been quick to abandon the social condition-
ing paradigm. As Hunt points out elsewhere, in historical studies cultural historical
have largely superseded socio-historical approaches.1
At the same time, however, cultural history and cultural studies have trans-
posed some of Marxism’s social radicalism into their postmodernist approaches. As
the urban geographer Michael Storper, hostile to both Marxism and postmodern-
ism, argues, the ‘cultural turn’ has sublimated both the social energies and utopian
impulses of Marxism, thus effectively replacing it as an academic paradigm: “Al-
though Marxism has largely gone out of fashion, the utopian impulse has moved
to postmodernism (and to a lesser extent, postcolonialism) on the theory side, and
multiculturalism and ‘cultural politics’ in political practice” (2001, 156).2 While
I doubt postmodernism’s utopian orientation,3 it is definitely true that the now
common understanding of ‘culture’ in history and cultural studies as a vast array of
“signifying or symbolic systems” (Williams 1983b, 91; Williams’ emphasis) retains
some of Marxism’s insistence on culture being a social product. Yet, at the same
time, this notion of ‘culture’ “confuses but even more often conceals the central
question of the relations between ‘material’ and ‘symbolic’ production,” Williams
further maintains (91). In spite of claiming to consider the social roots of ‘culture,’
cultural studies (in my opinion, often uncritically and simplistically) tends to sub-
sume categories that Marxists have traditionally thought of as social, such as ‘class,’
‘race’ and ‘gender,’ under the catch-all term ‘culture.’ As early as 1984 the Marxist
literary critic Terry Eagleton criticised this development, when he sarcastically re-
1 Drawing on data from the ‘American Historical Association,’ Hunt points out that the number
of its members who identify themselves as social historians has dropped by 60 percent between
1992 to 2005, while the number of those identifying themselves as cultural historians has risen
by 78 percent within the same period (see 2008, 323).
2 Michael Vester also stresses this political dimension of the ‘cultural turn.’ As he argues, “[a]uch
frühere marxistische Theoretiker des ‘falschen Bewusstseins’ schlossen sich diesem ‘cultural turn’
an” and embraced the rights of minorities rather than those of the proletariat that was consid-
ered to be on the wane (2004, 319).
3 Several academics do not share Storper’s view about postmodernism’s utopian impulse. Very
pointedly, the Marxist historian Perry Anderson asserts that before Frederic Jameson started
developing his Marxist concept of the postmodern in the early 1980s, the “postmodern was
a sentence on alternative illusions.” As he further claims, former Marxists, such as the French
philosopher François Lyotard, even publicly disavowed any utopianism: “For Lyotard the very
parameters of the new condition were set by the discrediting of socialism as the last grand nar-
rative – ultimate version of an emancipation that no longer held meaning” (1998, 46).
 13

ferred to this triad as the “contemporary Holy Trinity of ‘class, race and gender’” in
cultural studies (1986a, 82). The paradigm of ‘culture’ being always and automati-
cally social seems to be a watered-down version of the much more rigid Marxist
paradigm of culture being invariably conditioned by socioeconomic processes, since it
deprives the orthodox Marxist assertion of much of its radical edge. It is that sani-
tised version of the Marxist tenet – and not its original revolutionary conception
which had regarded culture as a social and economic product – that has become
the now widely accepted dogma in cultural studies.
While the view of a culture as social product risks subscribing to crude eco-
nomic determinism, I will nevertheless adopt a materialist outlook. In the follow-
ing I will regard ‘culture’ in the distinct sense as an expression of and an interpreta-
tion of concrete socioeconomic struggles, in the way the political scientist Michael
Vester proposes:

Ökonomische Verortungen werden somit nicht überflüssig – wie es bei ei-

nigen Theoretiker des Postmaterialismus, des Überflusses und der Klassen-
losigkeit der Fall ist. Sie werden in einer dialektischen Beziehung zu den
praktischen Selbstdefinitionen der sozialen Gruppen gesehen. Entsprechend
wird Kultur nicht als völlig autonomes, sondern als relativ autonomes Feld
der symbolischen Praxis verstanden, in dem es um die Deutung der Praxis
und der Kämpfe der sozialen Gruppen geht. (Vester 2004, 319; Vester’s
emphasis)

I this study I concur with Vester’s contention (which in turn is largely derived from
Raymond Williams) that ‘culture’ constitutes a merely “relatively” autonomous
field in which material, social struggles are fought out and through on a symbolic
level.
The decision to adopt a Marxist materialist theoretical framework for this study
thus stems partly from a profound dissatisfaction with the anti-materialist tenden-
cies that have characterised a large part of cultural and literary studies over the past
thirty years. In this respect, this study also represents a sort of rebellion against the
‘cultural turn’ that has dominated the humanities for the past three decades ever
since the ‘linguistic turn’ had become the dominant paradigm in the humanities
during the mid-1980s and early 1990s. Ironically, in this move against immate-
riality in the humanities, my seemingly outdated approach coincides with recent
developments. Indeed, frustration with the immateriality of the ‘linguistic turn’
and that of the subsequent sub-turns of the ‘cultural turn’ has been rising increas-
ingly over the past ten years culminating in the new trend towards a ‘material turn’
14

in the humanities.4 As several of its proponents confirm, this orientation towards

a new theoretical paradigm to supersede the increasingly beleaguered one of the
‘cultural turn’ arises out of a wider discontent with the immaterialism of post-
structuralism, its obsession with immaterial, free-floating, signifiers. For instance,
the authors of a German journal for cultural studies write in the introduction to its
first issue, whose theme was significantly “Fremde Dinge,” that the trend towards
the material must be regarded as a reaction against the pronounced immaterialism
of post-structuralism:

Die kulturwissenschaftliche Diskussion hat sich lange Zeit einseitig auf die
Eigengesetzlichkeit der Medien als Bedeutungsträger bezogen, wie auch auf
die Macht des Imaginären und der Erinnerung. Materielle Gegenstände,
Materie selbst, Sachen, Dinge traten – zu bloßen Signifikanten geworden –
nur noch selten in Erscheinung. Selbst der menschliche Körper fungierte
in erster Linie als Projektionsfläche von Machtdispositiven. Allenfalls die
materielle Welt von Wissenschaft, Recht und Verwaltung wurde als Realie
untersucht, der eine gewisse eigenständige Wirkung auf das Menschliche
zugesprochen wurde. (Frank et al. 2007, 1)

While I share the wish to redress the immateriality of the ‘cultural turn,’ my defi-
nition of the ‘material’ differs considerably from the one suggested here. As this
quotation suggests, the proposed novel orientation of cultural studies, the mate-
rial turn,’ understands materiality not primarily in a social sense (as I do in this
book) but rather in a very literal one. Instead of on immaterial entities such as
“Signifikanten,” the focus is now placed on material object such as “Materie selbst,
Sachen, Dinge.”
This emphasis on things is not a whimsical fancy of the editors and their con-
tributors but is shared by other relatively recent publications in cultural studies
and cultural history that engage with material objects. For instance, Judith Pascoe

4 Doris Bachmann-Medick, who identifies seven more ‘cultural turns’ after the cataclysmic ‘lin-
guistic turn’ (the ‘interpretative,’ ‘performative,’ ‘reflexive,’ ‘postcolonial,’ ‘translational,’ ‘spatial’
and ‘iconic turn’) in her study, argues that the focus on language and semiotics initiated by
the ‘linguistic turn’ has remained the hallmark of all subsequent turns: “Dem linguistic turn
wird hier absichtlich kein eigenes Kapitel gewidmet. Denn er durchzieht alle einzelnen turns
und bildet das mächtige Vorzeichen für alle weiteren Richtungswechsel und Schwerpunktver-
lagerungen, die sich jeweils auf ihre Weise am linguistic turn abarbeiten. Dieser hat schließlich
eine Grundlegungsfunktion, die sogar für einen Paradigmenwechsel gehalten wird […]” (2009,
33). It remains to be seen whether the ‘material turn,’ which Bachmann-Medick omits from
her study, will really constitute a break with the linguistic-semiotic paradigm introduced by the
‘linguistic turn.’
 15

in here widely acclaimed book on Romantic collectors and their trophies, The
Hummingbird Cabinet: A Rare and Curious History of Romantic Collectors (2006),
dedicates an entire chapter to the fate of a guitar that had allegedly once belonged
to the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley; an entertaining exercise in literary detective work,
but of doubtful academic value. On a theoretical level, Bill Brown’s concept of
‘thing theory’ epitomises this tendency towards the study of material objects in the
most extreme fashion. Trying to establish a non-anthropocentric materialism, he
assigns an agency to material objects, thus turning them from objects into quasi-
living entities, from objects into ‘things.’5
So far, it seems, the ‘material turn’ has been largely characterised by a strong
occupation with tangible material objects and, conversely, an obvious avoidance
of what I want to refer to as the ‘social material.’ By this term, that is central for
this book, I understand the sum of socioeconomic practices, institutions, groups,
classes, and structures that constitute a given society. The social material seems
still seems so strongly aligned with Marxist ideologies (considered as widely dis-
credited) that most cultural critics are highly reluctant to place the relationship
between culture and the social material at the heart of the emerging ‘material turn.’
Instead, as Brown emphasises, the goal of the ‘material turn’ must be to avoid the
traditional fallacy of looking “through objects (to see what they disclose about his-
tory, society, nature, or culture – above all, what they disclose about us)” (2001,
4; Brown’s emphasis). In my opinion, however, to eschew confronting the social
material means that this new turn might descent into a crude materialism and,
thus, prove to be just another short-lived fashion in cultural studies. In contrast
to the new ‘material turn’ that largely focuses on tangible material objects I will
place the emphasis on the interactions between the social material, discourses and
cultural products. As I will argue in the first chapter of this book, a non-dogmatic
re-engagement with Marxist cultural theory can be prove fruitful for this study
that inquires into the interaction between the transformation of the social material
on the one hand and the shifting radical and revolutionary discourse on the other.
Besides promoting this theoretical commitment that underpins it, this study
also contributes towards filling a gap in the research of the revolutionary discourse
and radical literature in the period in question. From a comparative perspective it
engages with a seminal, but largely neglected, aspect of 19th-century radical litera-

5 In this programmatic essay, which appeared in a special issue of the renowned journal Critical
Inquiry that was dedicated to ‘things,’ Bill Brown argues to recognise the “thingness of objects.”
To view material objects as ‘things’ means accepting them as inexplicable ‘subjects’ rather than
assigning a definite sense and purpose to them as ‘objects.’ Thus for Brown regarding objects as
things implies a radical reversal of the traditional “subject-object relation” (cf. 2001, 4).
16

ture: the transition from a concept of political revolution to one of social revolu-
tion. This study sets out to prove how literature participated prominently in this
pivotal ideological and discursive shift that gradually took place between the end
of the Napoleonic Empire in 1815 and the failure of the European revolutions of
1848/49. In doing so, I will illustrate how both nonfictional and fictional texts
of this highly politicised period are closely interwoven. They interact with each
other not only on an inter-ideological, but also on a direct intertextual level up
to the point at which they overlap both semantically and rhetorically. Fiction and
nonfiction often employ surprisingly similar if not the same language, imagery,
and poetic concepts. There is, however, nothing coincidental about these parallels
between contemporary fiction and nonfiction. On the contrary, they are rooted
in a comprehensive notion about revolutionary literature that includes nonfiction
as an integral element of it. Challenging the distinctions between journalist and
epic author, dramatist and political/social theorist, poet and pamphleteer, the radi-
cal writers of this period embarked on a revolutionarily novel poetics. Since the
boundaries between revolutionary fictional and nonfictional texts were becoming
increasingly blurred, this study will regard both as forming one discursive system.
Thus, it will challenge the traditional separation of revolutionary literature into
fictional and nonfictional genres. While this distinction has already been largely
put in abeyance regarding those ‘literary’ revolutionary authors of this period who
crossed the borders between fiction and nonfiction, such as Büchner,6 Heine, and
Weerth, it has been more vigorously upheld concerning revolutionary authors of

6 This shift in the image of Büchner as a revolutionary author is paradigmatically reflected in two
exhibition catalogues from the mid-1980s. The contributions to the catalogue for the exhibition
(1984-1987) marking the 150th anniversary of the publication of Büchner and Weidig’s socio-
revolutionary pamphlet Der Hessische Landbote (Mayer 1987b) and the essays in the catalogue
of the Büchner exhibition in Darmstadt and Weimar in 1987 and 1988 (Georg-Büchner-Aus-
stellungsgesellschaft 1987) clearly aim to portray Büchner as a writer who transcended in his
revolutionary writings the borders between fiction and nonfiction, between literature and poli-
tics. The subtitle of the latter catalogue “Revolutionär, Dichter, Wissenschaftler” programmatically
foregrounds this trans-discursive dimension to Büchner’s oeuvre, an aspect that Georg Lukács
had already recognised in 1937 in his paper against the fascist appropriation of Büchner. Lukács
praised him as a “plebejisch-demokratischer Revolutionär in seiner politischen Tätigkeit, als phi-
losophischer Materialist in seiner Weltanschauung, als Nachfolger Shakespeares und Goethes im
großen Realismus“ (1990, 198). (For a survey of the German socialist and fascist reception of
Büchner between 1914 and the 1940s, see Goltschnigg 2001, 55-60.) A pioneering work that
crucially anticipated later tendencies in Büchner scholarship was Hans Mayer’s Marxist study
(1972) of Büchner’s life and work that first appeared in 1946. By placing both Büchner’s biog-
raphy and oeuvre in their contemporary socio-political context, Mayer illustrates how his work
in its revolutionary concern crossed the borders of fiction and nonfiction.
 17

nonfiction such as Marx, Engels, and the English radical journalists writing at the
time of the Romantic revolutionary poets.
The development of the entire revolutionary discourse was directly shaped and
modified by the revolutionary transformations right as they were taking place.
These include not only transitions in the political but also the even more dramatic
changes that were taking place in the social material realm. While this sounds like
a truism, literary critics have often downplayed how strongly these social-historical
changes conditioned radical literature of the period. As this study asserts, the liter-
ary texts in question can only be adequately understood through tracing their roots
in the immediate socio-historical context and analysing their intertextuality within
the wider contemporary discourse. The changes that occurred during this period
were truly momentous since it was then when the foundations of the modern Eu-
ropean state, society, and economy were laid. The time covered in this study saw
particularly pronounced and dramatic socioeconomic transformations.
The impact of the Industrial Revolution was beginning to be felt across Europe.7
Starting in Britain and slowly spreading across the other countries of Western and
Central Europe, it led to an immense accumulation of capital, predominantly in
the hands of the bourgeoisie. However, as social historians remind us, this came
at an enormous ‘human cost.’ Among others, the destruction of traditional so-
cial networks, rapid demographic change, and the emergence of a novel class, the
proletariat, caused enormous socioeconomic and socio-political tensions (see for
instance Hobsbawm 1999, 57-74). These are all key factors that motivated the
Pan-European shift from social to political revolution in the radical discourse as a
whole. Again, the transformations of revolutionary theory and fiction have often
been discussed separately.
Regarding the nonfictional discourse, the crucial development in revolution-
ary theory and practice from political to social revolution has been addressed by
historians, political theorists, and even by the occasional literary critic. Within the
last 30 years, scholars have proven how sub-bourgeois and proletarian associations
were instrumental in instigating the transition from a concept of political to social
revolution in the German and British context.8 Apart from these national studies,

7 Eric Hobsbawm goes as far as to claim that “[n]o change in human life since the invention of
agriculture, metallurgy, and towns in the New Stone Age has been so profound as the coming of
industrialization” (1999, xx).
8 Hans-Joachim Ruckhäberle discusses this transition in his studies of revolutionary pamphlets in
Germany during the 1830s (1975) and in pamphlets published by the early German proletarian
movement in Paris in the 1830s (1977). There several other studies by historians and political
theorists who investigate how, in the 1830s and 1840s, sub-bourgeois associations of workers,
18

there are surprisingly few studies that investigate this transition of revolutionary
ideology and practice during this period from a wider trans-national, European
perspective. Those historians, however, who have looked at this period from a Pan-
European angle, agree that this shift from a political concept to one of social revo-
lution formed the hallmark of the European revolutionary developments between
1815 and 1848/49.9
When it comes to tracing this transition of revolutionary ideology in fictional
revolutionary literature, research is even scarcer. No study exists, to my knowledge,
that explicitly investigates this shift from political to social revolution in fictional
texts during the period in question. Similarly, there is no monograph that conse-
quently investigates radical literature from this angle neither in the field of German
nor in English literature, let alone one that adopts a comparative perspective. Re-
search on this topic is limited both in number and content, largely dealing with a
handful, mostly canonical, authors.10 This lack seems all the more astounding since

artisans, and journeymen (mainly in exile in France, Switzerland, and London) had prepared the
shift in German discourse towards social revolution (see for instance Seidel-Höppner 2000 &
2002, Grandjonc, König & Roy-Jacquemart 1979, Lattek 1987). For a brief account of the shift
from Jacobinism to Socialism (focussing on France and Britain), see Bookchin 1996 ff. II, 1-28.
Regarding the British context, which in contrast to the German largely lacked bourgeois theo-
rists of this transformation in revolutionary ideology, scholars have also shown how craftsmen
and artisans in particular – the sub-bourgeois classes – were most instrumental in effecting this
shift during the period in question. For significant contributions that deal in the wider sense
with the key contribution of these classes toward this change in revolutionary ideology in Brit-
ain, see besides E. P. Thompson‘s epochal study The Making of the English Working Class (1980;
first published 1963), Prothero 1979, Worrall 1992 and McCalman 1998. For a summary of the
evolution of ideology in British 19th-century radicalism and socialism, see, for instance, Claeys
1987a, 1987b and Belchem 1996. For a seminal study of the strong – often socio-revolution-
ary – tensions in Britain in the period from the French Revolution to the European revolutions
of 1848/49, see Royle 2000.
9 Since Eric Hobsbawm’s important work on Europe between the French Revolution and the
1848 Revolutions (1977, first published 1962), as far as I can see, only three major studies have
appeared that investigate the revolutionary development in the period from 1815 to 1848 from
a pan-European perspective: Droz 1967, Langewiesche 1985, Sperber 2000, Lyons 2006 and
Fahrmeir 2010. David S. Mason’s slim book (2005) that deals with the changing face of revolu-
tions in Europe from 1789 to 1989 can hardly be regarded as an important contribution to this
topic. It is severely flawed mainly due to its vast historic scope that leads to superficiality and
frequent oversimplifications. These tendencies also mar his simplistic and tendentious account
(67-78) of Marx’s sophisticated socio-revolutionary theoretical system.
10 For studies investigating how far Büchner adhered to a concept of a proletarian social revolu-
tion see, for instance, Mayer 1979a & 1987a and Holmes 1995b. For discussions of Heine’s
shift and his relationship towards social revolution see, for instance, Lukács 1978, Koßek 1982
and Mende 1991. Hans-Joachim Ruckhäberle (1988) investigates how far Börne, when he en-
 19

(as pointed out) this ideological change constitutes one of the key characteristics
not merely of revolutionary nonfiction but also of revolutionary fiction in this pe-
riod. As this study sets out to prove, this paradigm shift manifests itself equally in
both modes of discourse: in socio-political and socio-philosophical essays by semi-
nal political theorists, revolutionary pamphlets, revolutionary speeches, newspaper
and journal articles as well as in fictional literature by both highly canonical (e.g.
Percy Bysshe Shelley and Heinrich Heine) and marginalised revolutionary authors
such as Thomas Lovell Beddoes, Ludwig Börne and Georg Weerth.
Such an undertaking requires a theoretical framework that inquires into the
relation of the social material and the cultural realm. In spite of its ideological
baggage, in my opinion, Marxist cultural theory still constitutes the most suitable
theoretical framework for my endeavour. Taking a fresh look at key developments
of Marxist Culture from Marx to the present, this study identifies those concepts
most suitable for my purpose. A second major theoretical concern is to discuss and
clarify the similarity and difference between concepts of political and social revolu-
tion (chapter 1). The study then progresses chronologically by singling out three
key turning points for the transformation of revolutionary ideology. The first flash-
point is the aftermath of the so-called ‘Peterloo Massacre’ (1819) in Manchester,
when the concept of social revolution gains wider currency among British radical
circles, albeit in still contradictory and protean form (chapter 2). The second is
the July Revolution in France in 1830 and its consequences for Europe’s socio-
political order. In its aftermath the concept of social revolution is theoretically
further advanced and increasingly debated in the early socialist circles while the
first openly socio-revolutionary proletarian revolts further contribute to heighten
the fear of the spectre of a proletarian revolution among the bourgeoisie (chap-
ter 3). The subsequent bourgeois revolutions of 1848/49 are virtually haunted by
this spectre of a proletarian social revolution. While large-scale proletarian socio-
revolutionary revolts – with the major exception of the unsuccessful June Insur-
rection (1848)), which has widely been regarded as “the first self-conscious and
explicit working-class insurrection in history” (Bookchin 1996 ff. II, 145) – failed
to materialise, the hope for a social revolution on the socialist side and the terror
of one among the bourgeois factions lasted as long as the revolutions themselves
(chapter 4).

gaged with early French socialists and the German early proletarian movement, moved towards
a concept of social revolution in the 1830s. Doris Köster-Bunselmayer also touches on the shift
towards social revolution in her study of early German socialism and its relationship to litera-
ture from 1843 to 1848, for instance in her comparison of Engels’ and Weerth’s 1840s texts on
English proletarians (1981, 120-133).
20

Although this sketch of the book’s structure might suggest otherwise, it does not
pretend to be a work of historical scholarship in the way that it aims to develop
a new thesis on the history of this period. However, its narrative of the shifting
revolutionary discourse and of its interactions with radical literature is closely in-
tertwined with the – left-leaning – historiography of this period. From a pan-Eu-
ropean perspective, this narrative is most forcibly told in Eric Hobsbawm’s epochal
study The Age of Revolutions. While of course I cannot provide a comprehensive
account of British and German history from 1819 to 1848/49, a very brief socio-
historical survey of this turbulent period seems essential, at the very least to help
those potential readers who are not historians of the period to follow the argument
of this study. My investigation starts by tracing the impact of the socio-revolution-
ary tensions that marked the economic depression in Britain after the Napoleonic
Wars. These frictions culminated in the aftermath of the so-called ‘Peterloo Mas-
sacre’ (1819) in Manchester when a mass working-class demonstration for political
and social reform was brutally crushed by troops. Hewing their way through the
crowd, they killed dozens of people (among them several women and children),
and injured several hundred. With the radicals blaming a unit of bourgeois militia
members for this atrocity, ‘Peterloo’ fuelled already existing fears of class war and
heightened the class conflict between bourgeoisie and the emerging proletariat. As
historians assert, with Peterloo occurring during a time of heightened social ten-
sion and economic depression, it produced “a revolutionary cocktail” (Royle 2000,
53). Moreover, as E. P. Thompson claims, “a revolution was possible” (1980, 737)
and was only narrowly avoided. Among parts of the radicals it increasingly became
clear that this potential revolution had not only to be political but also social if
it were to change the living and working conditions of the lower classes. How-
ever, this scenario of socioeconomic transformation that was envisaged in some of
their writings raised powerful fears of proletarian social revolution among both the
bourgeoisie and the aristocracy.
While a revolution failed to materialise in Britain in 1819 (or at any time dur-
ing the 19th century for that matter), at the next major European revolutionary
event these tensions emerged even more forcefully. At this point also the German
radical discourse saw a considerable move towards social revolution, which had
been largely absent in the 1810s and 1820s.11 Not only did the class conflict be-
11 Several factors may account for the absence of a pronouncedly socio-revolutionary discourse
in German in 1810s and 1820s. In comparison to Britain, Germany lacked an advanced radi-
cal, proto-working-class movement, as its industrial and economic development still lagged
far behind. Moreover, the German states were firmly in the grip of the Restoration, with the
‘Karlsbader Beschlüsse’ (1819) cracking down not only any oppositional writings but on any
activities that were deemed subversive, such as political clubs, fraternities, artisanal associations
 21

tween the proletariat and bourgeoisie intensify, but also the conflict between those
two competing revolutionary concepts, the one that favoured a merely political
revolution (insisting that – together with social reforms – this type of revolution
was sufficient to alleviate the pressing social problems) and the one that insisted
that a social revolution had to follow it. Increasingly opposed to each other, we
find on the one hand political revolution that aims to change the form of govern-
ment and on the other social revolution that seeks to fundamentally transform
the existing socioeconomic structures (see Chapter 1 & 3). These two develop-
ments are closely linked to July Revolution in 1830 in France and its repercus-
sions throughout Europe (such as heightened socio-revolutionary unrest in Britain
and Germany). Both the July Revolution and the Reform Bill in Britain in 1832
marked a decisive victory for the bourgeoisie and (economic) liberalism. While the
Reform Bill enfranchised parts of the middle classes and eased socio-revolutionary
tensions, the political and social ambitions of the working class were thwarted. As a
consequence, many among the British politicised working class rallied behind the
mass movement of Chartism, which campaigned for universal franchise and social
reform. It was solely at its most radical edges though, that Chartism was a genu-
inely socio-revolutionary rather than a political and socially-reformist movement (see
chapter 3.1). At the same time, however, the emerging early proletarian and social-
ist discourse on the continent, forcefully backed by the first-large scale workers’ re-
volts in history (in Lyon in 1831 and 1834), decidedly moved towards proletarian
social revolution, thus posing a major challenge to liberal capitalism. Activists such
as Blanqui and Theodor Schuster, alongside the most radical bourgeois authors
(e.g. Börne, Büchner, Beddoes), demanded fundamental socioeconomic changes,
such as the redistribution of property and capital, a change in the mode of produc-
tion, and an end to the exploitation of the proletariat.
These socio-revolutionary goals became ever more prominent in the prelimi-
nary stages of the 1848/49 revolutions and frightened not only the conservative
and liberal bourgeoisie but also further contributed to hardening the division of
revolutionaries into supporters and opponents of the concept of social revolution.
As Marx and Engels famously maintain in Das Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei
that was written in February 1848 on the eve of the last pan-European revolutions,
Europe in its entirety, from left-wing French Republicans to arch conservatives, is
haunted by the “Gespenst des Kommunismus” (Marx & Engels 1956ff. IV, 461).12

and so forth. As far as I am aware there does not exist a study that would compare British and
German radicalism in the 1810s and 1820s.
12 For all subsequent references to this first edition of Marx and Engels’ works, I will use the estab-
lished acronym MEW.
22

Central to this spectre was the bourgeois horror scenario of a massive proletarian
social revolt that overshadowed the revolutions. Culminating in the Parisian June
Insurrection (23-26 June 1848), in which tens of thousands of workers unsuccess-
fully but doggedly battled the military of the French Republic for the right to a
“democratic and social republic” (cf. Gould 1995, 49) at a massive cost of lives,
the ideological conflict between political and social revolution proved one of the
factors that contributed to the failure of the 1848/49 revolutions.
It is this historical path that I aim to reconstruct in my narrative of evolving
radical discourse. Using selected writings of the early Marx and Engels on culture,
ideology, consciousness, and political and social revolution as well as 20th-century
Marxist theories of cultural studies (Georg Lukács, Raymond Williams, Cultural
Materialism) as its theoretical basis, I investigate this shift in revolutionary dis-
course from an interdisciplinary, intertextual, and inter-discursive perspective. The
study decisively questions the validity of the still dominant intra-literary approach
to radical literary texts. At the same time, it also challenges fashionable notions
and schools in cultural studies (‘Culture-as-Text,’ New Historicism, etc.) that at-
tempt to subsume the social and political under an extended notion of the ‘text’
(chapter 1.1). Instead, I argue that political texts (fictional and nonfictional) can
serve as ‘ideological forms’ through which humans may gain consciousness of the
transformations on the socio-material level. The second half of this chapter (1.2)
is dedicated to clarifying the distinction between a concept of political and one of
social revolution. To briefly summarise the key difference between these compet-
ing concepts of revolution, the advocates of political revolution asserted that a
mere change in the system of government would be sufficient to achieve decisive
social change. By contrast, those who adhered to the ideology of social revolution
insisted that besides political revolution a transformation of the socioeconomic
system, the capitalist mode of production, and of the distribution of property and
capital was necessary to genuinely change contemporary society. In the theoreti-
cal chapter of this study, this shift is seen both through the lens of 20th-century
social historians and political theorists, as well as through those of key contempo-
rary, 19th-century contributions to this debate. Besides the French socialists of the
1830s, who were among the first to theoretically formulate and debate the distinc-
tion between political and social revolution, the contribution of the early Marx to
revolutionary theory is analysed and evaluated. While he was not widely received
until the second half of the 19th century, his reflections on social revolution are
pivotal to avoid a reduction of the debate to mere economics. As I argue, in his
seminal essays from the year 1844 he extended the meaning of social revolution
beyond its purely socioeconomic dimension to a discussion of the social nature
 23

of humanity within the historical process, both past and present. Introducing the
socio-philosophical term of ‘alienation’ into the theoretical debate on concepts of
revolution, he claimed that the proletariat, in staging a social revolution, attempts
to reverse its extreme alienation not only from the products of its labour but also
from its social self. Social revolution for the early Marx is the proletariat’s conscious
revolt against its dehumanised position as the pariah of society.
While Marx was the first to build his elaborate theory of revolution on proletar-
ian alienation, the emerging socio-revolutionary discourse in Britain in the 1810s
already focused on this fact (employing it as a major argument to question the
concept of a purely political revolution). Authors in the British context of 1819 in-
clude Percy Bysshe Shelley and British radical journalists such as Richard Carlile as
well as working-class pamphleteers. It is argued that in the most radical moments
of his 1819/1820 texts (The Mask of Anarchy, “Song to the Men of England,” A
Philosophical View of Reform, etc.) Shelley comes close to endorsing a materialist
concept of lower-class social revolution as it is put forward by the far left among
the contemporary radicals. At same time, however, he still largely adheres to a con-
cept of political revolution as well as to idealist concepts of revolution.
Germane to this ideological struggle is the idea of a ‘moral revolution’ that is
derived from the traditional notion that E. P. Thompson has termed the “moral
economy of the crowd.” This concept presupposes an ethical framework governing
the social relations between the classes. Pivotally, it allows the masses to forcefully
restore the ‘fair’ and ‘just’ class relations if their social superiors were to violate this
unwritten social contract. Although it was defunct in practice by the early 19th
century, it continued to linger on powerfully as a ‘residual’ (Williams 2005) ideo-
logical and cultural construct, influencing the British radical discourse until the
middle of the century.13 While some critics have claimed that it anticipates 20th-
century concepts of passive resistance such as Gandhi’s and Martin Luther King’s,
I insist that Shelley’s ‘moral revolution’ has to be seen in its contemporary con-
text. Shelley’s revolutionary concept, which is based on the framework of a ‘moral
economy,’ aims to transform society through passive mass resistance. This places it
at odds with the emerging notion of a violent proletarian revolution arising out of
an irreconcilable class conflict. The most leftist factions among the contemporary
radicals of whom Shelley was keenly aware endorsed such a scenario. In particular,

13 In his seminal essay “Problems of Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory” (first
published 1973) Williams defines the “’residual’” as “experiences, meanings and values, which
cannot be verified or cannot be expressed in terms of the dominant culture, [that] are neverthe-
less lived and practised on the basis of this residue – cultural as well as social – of some previous
social formation” (2005, 40).
24

the realisation of the extent of proletarian alienation raises doubt whether class
tensions and reckless exploitation can ever be reversed within the framework of
a ‘moral economy’ or a peaceful ‘moral revolution.’ It is argued that this clash of
competing concepts of revolution, which indicates a gradual transformation of
revolutionary ideology, constitutes the principal reason for the stark ideological
contradictions in Shelley’s 1819 writings (Chapter 2).
Analysing the changing revolutionary discourse in the years from the July
Revolution of 1830 to the early 1840s, Chapter 3 shifts the scene to the fierce
debates among the German radical writers. These involved also one exiled British
playwright, poet, and revolutionary activist Thomas Lovell Beddoes. Besides his
works, I draw upon texts by German literary revolutionary writers such as Ludwig
Börne, Heinrich Heine, and Georg Büchner. All of these ‘literary’ texts are further
contextualised with several pamphlets and speeches by the avant-garde among the
French early socialists such as Louis-Auguste Blanqui and the early German Paris-
ian proletarian movement.
A major part of Chapter 3 is devoted to challenging the widely accepted criti-
cal perception of Heine as a radical socio-revolutionary (or even ‘socialist’) writer.
Engaging with a large body of contemporary intertexts, both fictional and nonfic-
tional, I debunk this notion as a critical myth. First, I compare Heine’s manifesto
of sensual revolution in his essay Zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Religion in
Deutschland (1835) to Büchner’s parodies of it in his plays Dantons Tod (1835)
and Leonce und Lena (1836). In contrast to prevailing critical opinion, I argue
that Büchner, from his early socialist perspective, indicts the complicity of Heine’s
liberal vision of a luxurious idlers’ paradise by exposing the practice and ideology
of the contemporary exploitation of the proletariat. Employing an intertextual
montage technique, Büchner juxtaposes Heine’s socially exclusionary utopia with
scenes that harshly depict the exploitation and alienation of the contemporary low-
er classes. Second, I align Heine’s frequently contemptuous view of the lower classes
to related opinions among contemporary French liberal writers such as Saint-Marc
Girardin. In 1831, the latter warned starkly of the danger that the proletarian bar-
barians allegedly posed to civilisation. As it becomes evident through this compari-
son, Heine also casts the workers as dangerous savages who threaten the survival
of both culture and society. Third, I analyse another intertext to Heine’s essay on
German religion and philosophy to further elucidate the ideology behind Heine’s
programme of sensual revolution and Marx’s earliest socio-philosophical justifica-
tion of a proletarian social revolution, the “Einleitung Zur Kritik der Hegel’schen
Rechts-Philosophie” (1844). While the early Marx borrows Heine’s Hegelian notion
of the revolutionary power of philosophy, he – contrary to Heine – does not cast
 25

the bourgeois intellectuals but the proletariat as the avant-garde of social revo-
lution. My thesis that Heine cannot be considered a radical socio-revolutionary
poet is finally put to the test by engaging with his most socio-revolutionary poem,
“Die armen Weber” (1844), the original version of “Die schlesischen Weber.” Con-
trasting it with contemporary socialist texts on the Silesian Weavers’ Revolt and
the weavers’ battle song “Das Blutgericht” (1844), I argue that this poem attacks
anachronistic semi-feudal structures in contemporary Prussia rather than indicting
bourgeois exploitation of the proletariat.
The remaining two subchapters are devoted to Börne and Beddoes. Reading
Börne’s Briefe aus Paris alongside contemporary French socialist and early German
proletarian texts, I argue (again in stark opposition to critical orthodoxy) that in
contrast to Heine, Börne evidently moved towards endorsing proletarian revolu-
tion. Such a transition is also traced in revisions that Beddoes made to his major
oeuvre, the revolutionary Gothic tragedy Death’s Jest-Book between the late 1820s
and the mid-1840s. These are aligned to the concept of social revolution as it
emerges in Büchner’s farce Leonce und Lena.
The final section of this study, Chapter 4, is marked by a change of empha-
sis. While before I primarily investigate how the shifting revolutionary discourse
impacted on radical literature, I then argue that literary forms and structures also
played a decisive role in shaping the revolutionary theories of the German socialist
avant-garde between the mid-1840s and the end of the revolutions of 1848/49.
The chapter focuses on the German communist authors Georg Weerth, Moses
Heß, Engels, and Marx and their common project to write a Marxist, radically so-
cio-revolutionary poetics of revolution. Its first half investigates how Georg Weerth
develops such a poetics in his poems and articles written during his stay in England
in the mid-1840s. Tracing the roots and sources of Weerth’s revolutionary poetics,
I consider various influences and sources as diverse as Chartism (the contemporary
British working-class movement), English contemporary social poetry (e.g. Thom-
as Hood), the writings of the early Marx and Engels, and the poetics of Greek
tragedy. The second part of the chapter continues this first detailed exploration
of the emerging Marxist poetics of revolution. In particular, I compare in depth
Weerth’s and Marx’s analysis of the 1848/49 European revolutions in their articles
for Marx’s newspaper the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. I pose the question: Were some
key poetical-revolutionary positions that Marx sketches out most elaborately in
his political and social satire of the 1848/49 revolution Der achtzehnte Brumaire
des Louis Bonaparte (1852) not already articulated, in a more rudimentary form,
in some of the 1848/49 Marxist writings? Besides Marx’s own contributions to his
Neue Rheinische Zeitung, Weerth’s contributions to this newspaper are scrutinised
26

for such a poetics of revolution, in particular his satirical picaresque novel Leben
und Taten des berühmten Ritters Schnapphanski (1848/49) and his parodic sketches
of the German mercantile bourgeoisie, Humoristische Skizzen aus dem deutschen
Handelsleben. Both Weerth and Marx, I maintain, develop a very similar dialectics
of revolution that veers between tragedy, farce, and anti-tragedy.
1. Transforming Theoretical Perspectives: Radical Literature,
Revolutionary Discourse, and the Transition from Political to
Social Revolution

1.1 Challenging Boundaries: Literature, the Nonfictional Discourse, and the

Social Material

1.1.1 ‘Literature’ and its Critics: Constructs of Bourgeois Idealist Ideology

The trans-national, European, and trans-discursive dimension to the evolution

of revolutionary ideology in the period from the end of Napoleonic Wars to the
European revolutions of 1848/49 calls for an approach to the topic that radi-
cally transcends the boundaries of traditional literary criticism. In investigating the
shifting revolutionary ideology of fictional and nonfictional texts, one must not
only abandon the concept of a distinct national literature, but also furthermore
leave behind bourgeois notions of what should count as literature and what the
study of it should entail. Indeed, as Raymond Williams has persuasively argued,
both concepts are closely interlinked. As he recounts, the narrow sense of ‘litera-
ture,’ denoting solely “‘creative’ or ‘imaginative’ works” (1977, 48) only emerged
in the late 18th and 19th century with the establishment of the academic discipline
of national philology. This went hand in hand with the rise of the bourgeoisie and
its socioeconomic system: capitalism. As Williams insists, “the specialized concept
of literature developed in precise forms of correspondence with a particular social
class” (1977, 54).1
Excluding anything that even faintly smelt of ideological deviance from the
elitist concept of ‘literature,’ the bourgeoisie invented the qualitative distinction

1 Williams’ critique of the bourgeois concept of literature is closely linked to his investigation into
the class ideology that underpins the much larger bourgeois concept of ‘culture.’ As Francis Mul-
hern stresses in a recent reappraisal of Williams’ first seminal work Culture and Society (1958),
one of its central concerns was a critique of what Williams “called the idea of culture as a central
discursive formation of bourgeois civilization” (2009, 34; Mulhern’s emphasis). For a discussion
of the shifting notions of literature of ‘literature’ and ‘literary value’ in Raymond Williams’
work, see Raina 2002, 102-116.
28

between ‘major’ and ‘minor works.’ This effectively disqualified any literary texts
that were deemed to belong to the category of minor works from ‘serious’ lit-
erature, and hence from becoming objects of study. Thus, as Williams insists, far
from being ideologically neutral (merely aesthetic categories) these distinctions
are in reality steeped in class ideology (see Williams 1977, 46-52). Along with
introducing prescriptive limitations of what qualified as ‘literature’ and what did
not, bourgeois intellectuals, especially within academic institutions, developed the
ideologically loaded and exclusive category of ‘national literature:’ “a development
of the concept of ‘tradition’ in national terms” (1977, 48). As Williams maintains,
these class-based ideological divisions have negatively shaped literary criticism up
to the present day in spite of all the lip service that has been paid to the fashion-
able project of dismantling the literary canon.2 Dismissing works as minor, i.e.
qualitatively inferior, critics effectively aimed to exclude those texts that question
and threaten their own bourgeois-capitalist ideology from being a serious object
of analysis:

[…] criticism, taken as a new conscious discipline into the universities, to

be practised by what became a new para-national profession, retained these
founding class concepts, alongside attempts to establish new abstractly ob-
jective criteria. More seriously, criticism was taken to be a natural definition
of literary studies, themselves by the specializing category (printed works of
a certain quality) of literature. Thus these forms of the concepts of literature
and criticism are, in the perspective of historical social development, forms
of a class specialization and control of a general social practice, and of a
class limitation of the questions which it might raise. (Williams 1977, 49;
Williams’ italics)

Unmasking the elitist class politics of academia and most academics, Williams
calls for a “crucial theoretical break” in literary studies. Instead of assigning to
‘literature’ an autonomous status, it is paramount to regard and analyse literature
in its broadest sense “as a specializing social and historical category” that partakes
in the same social and ideological struggles as other discourses (1977, 53). Arguing

2 This ideological strategy to exclude ‘minor’ literature can even be discerned in some relatively
recent criticism of revolutionary literature, for instance in Martin Swales’ paper that traces how
the revolutions of 1848/49 were reflected in contemporary culture. Very conspicuously, he ig-
nores any works that would challenge his bourgeois ideology. For instance in his discussion of
German literature he omits all key socialists writers, such as Georg Weerth, Georg Herwegh,
Ferdinand Freiligrath, etc. Indeed his main focus as far the German cultural reflection is con-
cerned is firmly on ‘high culture,’ such as Richard Wagner’s Ring Cycle that can be considered
as reactionary in ideological terms. (See Swales 2000)
 29

against the traditional notion that as an aesthetic art form literature could possess
any degree of autonomy from the social realm, he considers literature as a social
practice that interacts with historical struggles and transformations. Literature as a
particular artistic practice is thoroughly permeated by the social and the material.
Even a considerable number of its generic forms are not empty shells, tradition-
ally passed on from one generation of writers to the other, but rather filled with a
shifting social ‘content.’ In chapter 6, entitled “Forms,” of his last major study The
Sociology of Culture (1981), which relates the development of the dramatic form
of tragedy from antiquity to changing socio-historical conditions, Williams insists
that “certain forms of social relationship are deeply embodied in certain forms of
art” (1995, 148).
Since social struggles constitute the social-material content of artistic forms, it
would be spurious to assign to art an autonomous history, as many liberal-human-
ist literary critics have traditionally done. Conversely, also vulgar-Marxist critics
who merely mechanistically relate literature to the contemporary socioeconomic
conditions of its production – “to the social and economic history within ‘it’ [‘lit-
erature’] had been produced” (cf. 1977, 52) – fail to comprehend the intrinsically
social character of art. Art is shaped and permeated by social relationships and
struggles to such a degree that any analysis that strives to separate art and the so-
cial by treating the formal development of art as autonomous is rooted in a major
ideological distortion:

We have first to recognize that there can be no absolute separation between

those social relationships which are evident or discoverable as the imme-
diate conditions of a practice – the signalled places, occasions and terms
of specifically indicated types of cultural activity – and those which are so
embedded within the practice, as particular formal articulations, that they
are at once formal and social, and can in one kind of analysis be treated as
relatively autonomous. (Williams 1995, 148)

For Williams, cultural practices cannot be separated from other social practices and
their social material context as the latter are themselves inscribed in the ‘art’ form
in which those cultural activities manifest themselves. Hence at the very most, art
can be “relatively autonomous.” According to Williams, this was most strongly the
case with the Greek dramatic festivals, in which the form was so saturated with so-
cial content that even a ‘merely’ formal analysis would reveal profound sociological
facts about Athenian culture and society. Of course such an intimate relationship
can no longer be found in 19th-century literature. However, I will nevertheless
contend that also in the literary (as well as nonfictional) texts analysed here, the
30

formal analysis cannot be separated from investigating the social practices, forces
and events which have not only shaped the cultural product, but whose future
development it wants to shape in turn.

1.1.2 Culture as Text? The Pitfalls of ‘Cultural Immaterialism’

In the years that have passed since Williams voiced his revolutionary claims about
‘literature’ and ‘criticism,’ new critical and theoretical approaches such as Cultural
Materialism (initiated by Williams), New Historicism and Discourse Analysis, in-
spired by Michel Foucault’s project of an ‘archaeology of knowledge,’ have gone
some way to shatter any notions of the autonomy of literature from the social
material as well as weakening the primacy of the literary text over other discursive
forms and social and ideological practices.3
Yet, even some of those schools that profess a profound concern for the rela-
tionship between literary texts and the social-historical struggles often fall short of
bridging the traditional separation between literature and the social material. Pro-
grammatically, one of the founding fathers of New Historicism, Stephen Green-
blatt, has famously called for an intertextual approach to textual analysis that must
be marked by “an intensified willingness to read all of the textual traces of the
past with the attention traditionally conferred only on literary texts” (1990, 14).
However, what is advertised as a major re-evaluation of the status of the text within
critical practice often turns out be just another reaffirmation of the hegemony of
the textual over the ideological, the socio-political, and the socio-historical.
This tendency becomes obvious for instance in a crucial essay written by the
second pivotal figure from the early days of this school, Louis Montrose. Initially
he seems to go even further than Greenblatt and explicitly call for a major so-
cio-ideological contextualisation of the texts to be analysed, when he defines the
critical project of New Historicism as “resituating [literary works] not only in rela-
tionship to other genres and modes of discourse but also in relationship to contem-
3 For accounts of Cultural Materialism and the way it differs from New Historicism, see for in-
stance Felperin 1990, Dollimore 1994, Hawthorn 1996, Wilson 1995, and Brannigan 1998.
For a collection of seminal theoretical essays on Discourse Analysis and literary studies, see for
instance Fohrmann & Müller 1992. For a study of this interrelationship, see also Paskoski 2003.
For a recent concise summary of Foucault’s notions of discourse and their reflection in literary
theory, see Schößler 2006, 37-52. For an elucidation of how Foucault’s understanding of dis-
course is unstable in itself, fundamentally shifting from work to work, see Frank 2004. For an
early critical assessment of Foucault’s influence on New Historicism, see Lentricchia 1989.
 31

poraneous social institutions and non-discursive practices” (1989, 17). However,

such an extension of the scope of literary studies still perpetuates the traditionally
privileged status of the literary text and the cultural over the socio-political, since
all social practices are indiscriminately considered as mere text. Montrose propa-
gates this approach in the following statement which not merely encapsulates the
critical dogma of New Historicism but also of the majority of those approaches to
literature that are often subsumed under the fashionable label of ‘cultural studies.’
According to Montrose, the ambition of New Historicism consist not in con-
textualising the literary texts with its historical contexts but with contemporary
‘culture’ which in itself is conceived of as a “text:” “In effect, this project [of New
Historicism] reorients the axis of inter-textuality, substituting for the diachronic
text of an autonomous literary history the synchronic text of a cultural system”
(Montrose 1989, 17; my emphasis). Montrose’s definition deliberately obscures
the pivotal and problematic relationship that links literary texts to their contempo-
rary socio-political and socioeconomic context. As it turns out, Montrose does not
consider at all how art relates to extra-textual, social reality, such as class conflicts or
major changes in social or economic order. On the contrary, both in the theory and
practice of New Historicism the social and political aspects of art are uncritically
subsumed under the categories of “text” and the “cultural system.” The historical
context of the literary work is reduced to other – roughly – contemporary texts,
which then in turn are regarded as mere ‘texts’ within a larger ‘cultural text.’
I do not want to belittle the significant contribution that New Historicism
has made to shatter the key dogma that most literary critics had adhered to: the
primacy of the literary work of art over other nonfictional texts. New Historicism’s
main achievement lies in radically replacing the traditional concept of the autono-
mous literary text with the notion that literature forms part of a wider, inextricable
network of cultural texts, both nonfictional and fictional. By popularising this idea
and putting it into practice, New Historicism has pushed the boundaries of liter-
ary criticism and challenged established notions of what constitute appropriate
objects of study. Its shortcomings, however, are its pronounced a-historicism that
it displays despite its name. In doing away with the traditional concept of text,
it, at the same time, effectively abandons the notion that there exists any history
outside the network of interrelated texts and discourses. Essentially it substitutes
the historical background as a vital extra-textual point of reference for literary
texts with an entirely inter-textual frame of reference. Moritz Baßler sums up this
double substitution that New Historicism undertakes: “Der integrale Text löst sich
auf in ein ‘Gewebe’ von ‘Zitaten’ aus dem Text der Kultur, und der historische
Hintergrund löst sich auf in synchrone Intertextualität” (1999, 26). Consequently,
32

any extra-textual, social, or political reality remains firmly beyond its critical limits,
since all that literary texts allegedly refer to are just other cultural texts, whether
they are literary or nonfictional. In my opinion, such a post-structuralist notion
of cultural intertexuality is based on a dangerous misconception, as its embraces
an all-encompassing totalising conception of ‘text’ in which this term ultimately
becomes an esoteric, magical buzzword, a sort of fetish.
Irrespective of how obscure and erroneous such a concept may appear in hind-
sight, it is not limited to this particular school but, on the contrary, widespread
among cultural critics. Doris Bachmann-Medick, who was seminal in instigating
the ‘cultural turn’ in literature studies in Germany in the 1990s, literally seems to
regard culture as text. Building on this premise, she calls for a novel hermeneutics
of culture that deduces the socio-historical relations from the cultural text. As she
asserts, the goal of cultural studies must be to reconstruct the “network of histori-
cal, social, gender relations” by regarding their “cultural texualisation” instead of
their social and historical embedment. Clifford Geertz’s ‘thick description’ mutates
into ‘thick textualisation.’ Playing down both the role ideology plays in constitut-
ing meaning and the impact that the material aspects of actions, events, and social
situations have on texts, she boldly maintains that their societal meaning can be
understood only by viewing these social and historical relations as ‘texts:’

Kultur als Text – was heißt das? Kultur gilt in der interpretativen Kultur-
anthropologie nicht mehr nur als ein einheitliches Gesamtgefüge, das nicht
in der Summe von Normen, Überzeugungen, kollektiven Vorstellungen und
Praktiken aufgeht. Kultur ist vielmehr eine Konstellation von Texten, die –
über das geschriebene und gesprochene Wort hinaus – auch in Ritualen,
Theater, Gebärden, Festen usw. verkörpert sind. Solche Ausdrucksformen
sind höchst aufschlußreich, wenn es darum geht, das Netzwerk historischer,
sozialer, geschlechtsspezifischer Beziehungen im Licht ihrer kulturellen Vertex-
tung, Symbolisierung und Kodierung zu untersuchen. Erst indem man auch
Handlungen, Ereignisse und soziale Situationen als ‘Texte’ betrachtet, werden
sie – über ihre Situationskontingenz hinaus – für den kulturellen Prozeß der
Objektivierung von Bedeutungen erschlossen. (Bachmann-Medick 2004,
9-10; my emphasis)

Drawing on the same authority, Clifford Geertz, and just as simplistically as the
New Historicists, Bachmann-Medick has no qualms about subsuming the social
and historical under the overarching category of the ‘cultural text,’ instead of en-
gaging with the complex interaction between culture and the material. Everything
is mere culture and culture is merely text, one could sum up this argument. By
 33

privileging the realm of culture (which has traditionally been the domain of liter-
ary and cultural critics) over the social and economic, these theoreticians effec-
tively sidestep the challenge of developing a new type of socio-historical criticism:
a textual analysis that foregrounds the ideological rather than the rhetorical and
linguistic. Revealingly, Stephen Greenblatt effectively dismisses any theoretical in-
vestigation into the relation between the social material and art as misguided. As
he implies in a programmatic essay in which he calls for a ‘poetics of culture,’ only
staunch old Marxists, such as Frederic Jameson, still inquire: “what is the historical
relation between art and society or between one institutionally demarcated discur-
sive practice and another?” (1989, 5) Instead of focusing on the ‘textual’ aspects
of culture, the critic must inquire into the engagement of literature with the con-
temporary social material. Instead of a ‘poetics of culture’ as Stephen Greenblatt
demands, we need a ‘poetics of the social material.’
To sum up, in ideological terms the focus on the textual and the cultural con-
stitutes a veiled attempt to preserve the hegemony of traditional bourgeois literary
criticism. Hayden White raises such accusations in his essentially materialist cri-
tique of New Historicism. Highlighting the reductionism inherent in the notion
of ‘culture as text,’ he asserts that this school commits a “culturalist fallacy” and a
“textualist fallacy,” since it is the “‘text’ of a ‘cultural system’ that is to be substituted
for the ‘text’ of ‘an autonomous literary history’” (cf. 1989, 294):

Consequently, what was originally represented as an interest in studying the

relation between literary works and their socio-cultural contexts is suddenly
revealed as a radical reconceptualization of literary works, their socio-cultur-
al contexts, the relations between them, and therefore of “history” itself – all
are now to be considered as kinds of “texts.” (White 1989, 294)

New Historicism, White further implies, perpetuates traditional, idealist notions,

when it posits the ‘cultural text’ as permeated by ideology that could have an au-
tonomous history: one that is separate from the material changes taking place.
This thinking could be regarded as part of the wider delusion that Marx and
Engels famously exposed in Die deutsche Ideologie (probably written 1845-46). As
they radically assert, ideological forms (among them literature) do not possess any
form of autonomous history. Therefore they must not be regarded in isolation
from the historical societal process that generated them. The forms’ semblance
of autonomy, the “Schein der Selbständigkeit” (MEW II, 27), merely constitutes
an ideological distortion. In reality, Marx and Engels argue that the development
of the ideological forms is closely linked to socio-historical and socioeconomic
34

processes. Thought does not create material change, as idealism maintains, but hu-
mans, by effecting material change, also transform their thinking and the products
of their thought.

Sie [die Produkte des Denkens] haben keine Geschichte, sie haben keine
Entwicklung, sondern die ihre materielle Produktion und ihren materiel-
len Verkehr entwickelnden Menschen ändern mit dieser ihrer Wirklichkeit
auch ihr Denken und die Produkte ihres Denkens. (MEW II, 27)

It is from this materialist angle that White accuses New Historicism of a naïvely
idealist understanding of culture, society, and history. In spite of paying lip service
to Marx, its proponents blatantly ignore Marx and Engels’ devastating critique of
ideological delusions by perpetuating the illusion of privileging the superstructure
over its socioeconomic foundation. As White alleges, from the idealist perspective
of New Historicists “[s]ocial institutions and practices, including politics” (and
one might add, the socioeconomic relations as well) merely constitute secondary
effects of the cultural system. Since its practitioners fail to take into account the
socio-political basis of culture, New Historicism forms “a brand of historical ideal-
ism” (cf. 1989, 294), which I, in opposition to ‘Cultural Materialism,’ would like
to term ‘Cultural Immaterialism.’
White’s astute critique of New Historicism’s severe shortcomings, as far as the
ideological and socio-historical context of literature is concerned, shows that this
school’s inter-discursive approach is not suitable for my project. Since my study
aims precisely to investigate the interrelationship between the shifting revolution-
ary ideology in both fictional and nonfictional texts and the transformation on the
social and socio-historic levels, a more radical and more materialist approach is
needed: one that examines cultural products, such as literary texts, in close inter-
relation to their socio-political basis, yet without ignoring literature’s function as
a socially significant symbolising system. To devise such an approach constitutes a
desideratum not just for this study, but also for, more generally, for cultural studies.
As Wilhelm Voßkamp underlines, it remains an urgent task “für eine kulturwissen-
schaftliche ausgerichtete Literaturgeschichtsschreibung” to develop a methodology
that will enable the critic to analyse literature “zugleich als Symbolsystem und als
Sozialsystem” (1995, 37).
Far from fulfilling this demand, however, much recent literary criticism (even
on revolutionary literature) has not even adopted the extension of the object of
textual criticism to nonfictional, non-literary texts in the way that New Histori-
cism proposes. As far as recent criticism of German revolutionary literature of the
 35

period is concerned, such a trend cannot be detected at all. In the English con-
text, particularly regarding Shelley and his proto-socio-revolutionary 1819 poems,
a tendency towards a socio-political, inter-discursive approach is apparent (e.g.
Wolfson 1997, Janowitz 1998, Chandler 1998, Wood 1994, Redfield 2002, Cross
2004) with some authors also discussing Shelley’s attitude towards proletarian so-
cial revolution (Foot 1980, Scrivener 1982, Gardner 2002). Yet some traditional
critics still fiercely contest even such tentative steps towards an inter-discursive and
socio-political approach.
Richard Cronin, as late as 2000, ends his political analysis of Shelley’s The Mask
of Anarchy (1819), wich pays some lip service to an inter-discursive approach to
literary texts, with the thinly veiled appeal to redirect critical attention to the aes-
thetic qualities of Shelley’s ‘better’ poems. Instead of wasting time analysing the
revolutionary ideology of his ‘minor verse,’ critics should rather spent it addressing
the beauty of “his major verse.” Cronin states that:

[…] it would surely be wrong to claim that the success of The Mask of An-
archy is achieved without cost. It proves impossible to incorporate within
the ballad form that Shelley chooses much of what characterizes his major
verse: its metrical delicacy, its eroticism, its ability to render the “minute
gradations of the human heart.” (Cronin 2000, 180)

Here the beleaguered bourgeois ideology of aesthetics is emphatically reaffirmed

that, according to Williams, excludes from literature and its criticism not only all
nonfictional, “non-creative” texts but also “‘bad writing,’ ‘popular writing,’ ‘mass
culture,’” and “‘minor’ works” (1977, 51). While writing about Romantic litera-
ture, Cronin tries to resurrect the elitist Romantic ideology of the aesthetics as a
paradigm of 21st-century criticism, whose stranglehold on academia Williams so
aptly depicted in Marxism and Literature nearly thirty years ago. Appealing to “the
domain of ‘taste’ and ‘sensibility’” that are deemed essential to appreciate great
poetry, Cronin reveals the “social-class foundation” (Williams 1977, 51) that these
bourgeois ideological notions of literature and criticism are based upon:

‘Criticism’ […] was at once a discrimination of the authentic ‘great’ or ‘ma-

jor’ works, with a consequent grading of ‘minor’ works and an effective
exclusion of ‘bad’ or ‘negligible’ works, and a practical realization and com-
munication of the ‘major’ values. What had been claimed for ‘art’ and the
‘creative imagination’ in the central Romantic arguments was now claimed
for ‘criticism’, as the central ‘humane’ activity and ‘discipline.’ (Williams
1977, 51; Williams’ emphasis)
36

This study aims to avoid these pitfalls inherent in the ‘high’ Romantic ideology of
culture. As the example of Cronin and others shows, it still forms a major critical
paradigm in the arts which inhibits a better understanding of revolutionary art
and literature. Countering this tendency, this study deliberately pays little or no
attention to many texts of the period that literary critics have sanctified as ‘major’
works of the period (e.g. Byron’s Don Juan, Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind” and
Prometheus Unbound, Heine’s Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen, etc.). Moreover, at
no point will the aesthetic, poetic, and rhetorical propensities of any literary text
be considered as more important than its political and social ideology, even when
discussing such undisputed ‘masterpieces’ as Heine’s poem “Die armen Weber,” the
original version of “Die schlesischen Weber.” On the contrary, rather than making
the aesthetic the focus of analysis, these aspects will only be considered in so far
as they have a direct bearing on the ideology that the texts aim to put forward. As
Williams observes, the critical obsession with “the ‘aesthetic’ dimension (‘beauties’
of language and style)” has served both as a pseudo-objective legitimisation for the
implicit class bias of bourgeois criticism and as a tactic to obscure the ideology of
the analysed texts (1977, 51). In short, the hegemony of the aesthetic, rhetorical,
and philosophical over the ideological analysis of revolutionary literature not only
unduly de-radicalises it but also – what is even more important – detracts attention
from its immediate involvement in contemporary socio-ideological struggles.
This tendency is yet more pronounced in German than in English studies,
on which Cultural Materialism and New Historicism have had a deeper impact.
While especially the 1970s, as well as the 1980s, saw a sharp rise in socio-political –
often Marxist – criticism of revolutionary literature, with the fall of Socialism and
the end of the GDR such approaches have become unfashionable. Admittedly, a
considerable amount of GDR criticism on the Vormärz period consisted in vulgar
Marxist interpretations that simplistically relate the socioeconomic conditions that
they discern at level of the base one-to-one to literature which they consider as an
entirely ideological, superstructural element.4 Yet, more sophisticated Marxist ap-

4 For vulgar Marxist interpretations see for instance Kemp-Ashraf 1974 and Feudel 1974 for es-
says on Weerth, and Kaufmann 1976 as a paradigmatic GDR study on Heine. For the pitfalls of
vulgar Marxist approaches, see for instance Eagleton 2002, 16. As he accurately highlights, such
a method “suggests a passive, mechanistic relationship between literature and society” (2002,
46). For its shortcomings, see further Williams’ earlier criticism of this critical strategy: “[…]
even if the economic element is determining, it determines a whole way of life, and it is to
this, rather than to economic system alone, that literature has to be related. The interpretative
method which is governed not by the social whole, but rather by the arbitrary correlation of
the economic situation and the subject of study, leads very quickly to abstraction and unreality
[…]” (Williams 1961, 272).
 37

proaches have yielded insights into the shift from political to social revolution in
revolutionary literature by crossing the fiction-nonfiction-divide.5 However, the
backlash since 1989 against any socio-political approaches to German literature
that display even slight Marxist tendencies has had adverse effects on social-mate-
rialist criticism on a whole. The question of how German revolutionary literature
of the Vormärz engaged with the transformation from a concept of political to
social revolution has all but dropped off the critical radar.6 If the question of politi-
cal versus social revolution is raised at all, it is often covered with little more than
some fleeting remarks. For instance, Michael Perraudin, in his promisingly entitled
study Literature, the Volk and the Revolution in Mid-Nineteenth Century Germany
(2000), sets out to deal with Heine’s, Büchner’s, and Nestroy’s relationship to the
masses. In passing, he even mentions the issue of political/social revolution, but
fails to relate the literary texts to the shifts in revolutionary discourse. This obmis-
sion is due both to ideological as well as to methodological shortcomings. Indeed,
his analysis does not venture very far beyond a New Criticist’s approach that focus-
es on close readings of the texts. Consequently Perraudian neither contextualises
the literary texts he discusses with contemporary nonfiction, such as socio-political
essays, newspaper articles, and pamphlets nor does he investigate the engagement
with the contemporary social material.
The tendency of recent criticism to neglect the transformation of revolutionary
ideology stands in sharp contrast to the pivotal importance that this socio-ideo-
logical shift had for the period that is being investigated in this study. I would
go as far as to claim that without taking this transition into account any study of
revolutionary literature of this period must necessarily remain deficient, a view
shared by Peter Stein in his introductory essay to the Vormärz volume of Hanser’s
renowned social history of German literature. He emphasises that in the period
from 1815 to 1848 “Politik nicht die letzte Ursache der tiefgreifenden Umwälzung
war” and hence “der (politische) Revolutionsbegriff allein kaum noch zureichend
sein kann” (1998, 17). Stein’s cautious claim effectively posits the inadequacy of
any approach that remains within the confines of liberal-bourgeois criticism as it
can neither sufficiently account for how texts in this period engage with the funda-
mental socio-political transformations nor with the shift in revolutionary ideology.
5 One such very convincing example is Lefebvre’s essay on Heine’s and Marx’s writings on social
revolution (1973) that appeared in the proceedings of a GDR conference on Heine.
6 Notable exceptions to this general trend can be found in some essays and studies dedicated
to particular authors. Concerning Büchner and his relationship to social revolution, see e.g.
Holmes 1995a & 1995b and Frank 1998. For newer contributions on Heine’s relationship to
political and social revolution, see Mende 1991 and Holmes 1998, and regarding Weerth, Füll-
ner 1999.
38

In my opinion, this can only be achieved by a modern materialist approach that

investigates, more consequently than in most previous Marxist studies, revolution-
ary literature from a genuinely interdisciplinary and inter-discursive perspective.
This also means taking into account recent socio-political and socio-historical re-
search. Especially the contributions of the late Marxist social historian Walter Grab
already have demonstrated the fruitfulness of such an interdisciplinary approach
and the great potential it holds.7
Among Grab’s publications his anthology of revolutionary German poetry
“Noch ist Deutschland nicht verloren”: eine historisch-politische Analyse unterdrückter
Lyrik von der Französischen Revolution bis zur Reichsgründung (co-authored with the
author, dramaturge, and German scholar Uwe Friesel) will serve me, in particular,
as a model for my attempt to trace the shift in revolutionary ideology from 1819 to
1848. Combining a selection of radical poetry from the French Revolution to the
foundation of the German Reich with social-historically informed commentary
and analyses, Grab and Friesel consider these radical literary texts not primarily as
aesthetic artefacts but rather as socio-political texts whose prime aim was to inter-
vene in current political and social debaters. The principles of their book that they
propose in the introduction also apply to my study.

Nicht literarhistorische, sondern geschichtliche Zeiteinteilungen sind hier

die Folie zur Interpretation. Die Geschichte der Literatur soll mit der po-
litischen und sozialen Geschichte ebenso verschränkt sein, wie dies im tat-
sächlichen Ablauf der Fall war. (Grab & Friesel 1973, 13)

Taking these lines as a sort of motto for my project, I will also use pivotal politi-
cal and social events to structure my study of revolutionary literature: the Peter-
loo Massacre in England of 1819, the July Revolution of 1830 in France and its
aftermath, the Silesian Weavers’ Revolt of 1844, and finally the Revolutions of
1848/49. Progressing chronologically I will flesh out the shift from a concept of
political to socio-revolutionary ideology relative to the unfolding socio-political
and socioeconomic historical developments.

7 For Grab’s interdisciplinary essays on Büchner, see for instance Grab 1985, 1987 & 1990b, on
Heine Grab 1992 & 1997, on Freiligrath Grab 1990a. Another Marxist social historian who
has written on the revolutionary poets Herwegh and Freiligrath is Wolfgang Büttner (1992 &
1995). He has also dealt with Weerth as the editor of the arts section in Marx’s Neue Rheinische
Zeitung (Büttner 1993).
 39

1.2 Base and Superstructure Revisited

1.2.1 The Dialectics of Marx’s Base-Superstructure Analogy

In an introduction to concepts of Culture the sociologist Chris Jenks maintains

that Marx’s claim of the interdependence of the socioeconomic and the cultural is
of pivotal importance not merely for Marxist but for any contemporary theory of
culture:

Like it or not Marx has provided a major element in contemporary thinking

about society and culture: Indeed, one might go as far as to say that all sub-
sequent theorizing about culture has to be read and understood in relation
to what Marx and his interpreters have deposited for us (2005, 65)

While I cannot, of course, provide a comprehensive survey of Marxist theories

of culture, I will engage with Marx’s pivotal ideas on culture and their further
development by subsequent Marxists. This is all the more pertinent, since a Marx-
ist approach that incorporates the advances in socio-political, intertextual, and
inter-discursive literary theory within the last twenty years will serve as the basis
for my study of the changes in revolutionary ideology throughout the period. For
this purpose it is essential to revisit Marx’s famous – and fiercely contested – base-
superstructure analogy, even at the cost of boring to death those readers who are
steeped in Marx and Marxism. Being neither a philosopher, nor a sociologist, nor
a political scientist nor an economist, but a literary critic and cultural historian, I
am aware that the following ‘crash course’ in Marxism must by necessity remain
deficient. However, the question of ‘base’ and ‘superstructure’ is so fundamental
for both theory and practice of materialist cultural analysis that one has to face up
to the challenges it raises. In my opinion, the following assertion, made by Terry
Eagleton in 1976, has lost little of its cogency:

What […] is the relation between ‘base’ and ‘superstructure’ in art itself? [...]
The question of how to describe this relationship between ‘base’ and ‘super-
structure’, between art as production and art as ideological, seems to me one
of the most important questions which Marxist literary criticism has now to
confront. (Eagleton 2002, 69; Eagleton’s emphasis)

One of the major problems with the base-superstructure analogy is the paradoxi-
cal role that it occupies in Marx’s work as well as in that of many subsequent
40

Marxist theorists. In spite of its centrality both for Marx and Marxism the anal-
ogy remains an underdeveloped concept, although it is recurrent throughout his
work from Die deutsche Ideologie right up to the final volume of Das Kapital. One
of the problems that any theorising about the analogy has to confront is that, in
correspondence with his developing thought, Marx constantly revised and subtly
adjusted his model.
To start with, its epistemological status is a moot point. Should one conceive
of it as a ‘metaphor,’ as symbolic figure of comparison to envisage the interaction
between the social material and political/ideological/artistic, etc. structures? Or
does it rather function as a more precise model, an ‘analogy’ that depicts the dia-
lectic interrelations between these two realms by way of correspondence? Stuart
Hall illustrates these conundrums in a seminal reflection on – what he terms – the
“‘base-superstructure’ metaphor” in Marxism (1977, 45). He demonstrates that
‘base-superstructure’ is at once one of most central and elusive concepts in Marx’s
entire thinking. As Hall insists in the opening sentence of his essay, “[o]f the many
problems which Marx perforce left in an ‘undeveloped’ state, none is more crucial
than that of ‘base-and-superstructure’” (43):

Can determination – one of the central themes of Marx’s theoretical work –

be thought of without simplifying what is it that ‘determines’ (the econom-
ic?), when (in the last instance?) or that determination operates (one-direc-
tionally)? In essence, those are the problems posed by the central position in
Marxism occupied by the topographical metaphor of base/superstructure.
(Hall 1977, 44; Hall’s emphasis)

Hall’s probing questions suggest, what also Frederic Jameson affirms: the question
of the relationship between ‘base’ and ‘superstructure’ as well as of the place that
this concept is assigned to cultural production still remains an unsolved problem
for today’s Marxists that requires further sustained debate. In his essay “Marx-
ism and Postmodernism” (1989) Jameson argues for a non-dogmatic approach
to Marx’s proposition. Similar to Hall, who terms it a “metaphor,” Jameson also
stresses the fluidity and openness of the concept. As Jameson suggests, rather than
regarding it as a schematic and fixed “model,” it should be conceived of as a fruit-
ful point of departure for further inquiry into the interrelation between base (the
material transformations and conflicts at the level production) and superstructure
(the related social, political and ideological forms). According to Jameson, this
analogy could serve as a productive starting point from which to inquire into the
space that, ‘culture,’ cultural production, and cultural products occupy regarding
the social material and the ideological:
 41
[…] ‘base and superstructure’ is not really a model, but a starting point and
a problem, something as undogmatic as an imperative simultaneously to
grasp culture in and for itself, but also in its relationship to its outside, its
content, its context, and its space of intervention and effectivity. How one
does that, however, is never given in advance. (Jameson 1998, 47)

Without abandoning the notion of ‘base-superstructure’ altogether, I want to ap-

proach this towering tenet of Marxist orthodoxy from a similar ‘undogmatic’ angle.
As Bryan Palmer warns, revisionist Marxist writing, “with its attempt to supersede
the mechanical content of the theoretical edifice of historical materialism and its
metaphor of base and superstructure,” risks “a problematic blurring of differentia-
tions.” The inevitable result “is an increasing drift towards idealism and movement
away from materialism,” he further maintains (1990, xiv). While my focus is on the
intractable interrelations between the emerging socio-revolutionary discourse and
radical literature, this development is obviously determined by the revolutionary
socio-historical and socioeconomic changes of the period. In contrast to Cultural
Materialism’s founding father Raymond Williams, who aims to transcend Marx’s
base-superstructure model, I will thus employ a less revisionist Marxist methodol-
ogy. Contrary to Marx who appears to place cultural products on the level of the
superstructure, Williams persuasively argues that they (including literature) need
to be viewed as social practices that belong not to the superstructure but directly
to the material basis. Regarding cultural activities as social activities, he claims
that cultural practices in reality rank among the primary productive forces. In the
Marxist sense of men producing themselves and their history through their labour,
creative cultural activities become part of the basic “productive forces” (2005, 35;
Williams’ emphasis). Therefore, he is able to locate cultural activities on the level
of the base. This means that they lose their status of ideological products, or forms,
and become instead material productive forces:

If we have the broad sense of productive forces, we look at the whole ques-
tion of the base differently, and we are then less tempted to dismiss as su-
perstructural, and in that sense as merely secondary, certain vital productive
social forces, which are in the broad sense, from the beginning, basic. (Wil-
liams 2005, 35)

While his revision of the Marxist societal model forms a seminal contribution to
cultural studies and has provocatively and productively challenged bourgeois con-
ceptions of the lofty status of culture and art by highlighting their material aspects,
it is less suitable for my purposes. Since this study wants precisely to illustrate the
42

close interactions between the major socio-historic and socioeconomic transitions

on the one hand, and changes in revolutionary ideology, concepts, and revolution-
ary literature on the other, the theoretical distinction between the economic base
and the ideological superstructure needs to be maintained.8 For me, it constitutes a
fruitful analogy to conceive of the relationship between the transformations of the
social material and texts which not merely reflect upon them, but also endeavour
to have some impact on altering them.
Most famously, succinctly and most controversially, Marx sketches out the
base-superstructure analogy in the preface to Ein Beitrag zur Kritik der politischen
Ökonomie (1859). Although cited countless times, this passage merits quoting in
full, since the ideological and interpretive challenges that it continues to pose have
often been overlooked:

Die Gesamtheit dieser Produktionsverhältnisse bildet die ökonomische

Struktur der Gesellschaft, die reale Basis, worauf sich ein juristischer und
politischer Überbau erhebt, und welcher bestimmter Bewußtseinsformen
entsprechen. Die Produktionsweise des materiellen Lebens bedingt den
sozialen, politischen und geistigen Lebensprozeß überhaupt. Es ist nicht
das Bewußtsein der Menschen, das ihr Sein, sondern umgekehrt ihr gesell-
schaftliches Sein, das ihr Bewußtsein bestimmt. Auf einer gewissen Stufe
ihrer Entwicklung geraten die materiellen Produktivkräfte der Gesellschaft
in Widerspruch mit den vorhandenen Produktionsverhältnissen oder, was

8 The question of whether Williams abandons or merely fundamentally revises the base-super-
structure analogy is as hotly debated among interpreters of his work, as is his overall relation-
ship towards Marx and Marxism. For two seminal discussions that reach contrary conclusions
see Higgins 1999, 101-124 and Jones 2006a, 37-60. Jones argues that Williams adopted the
so-called ‘Brumaire solution’ of the base-superstructure analogy that Marx puts forward in the
eponymous essay. According to Jones, this model “does indeed provide sufficient autonomy for
the cultural forms such that their alignment with specific social forces is seen as a determinate
product of their ‘homologous’ but convergently corresponding role.” Moreover, in this alterna-
tive version of the model, the “superstructural” elements, among them cultural forms, “are not
reflectively ‘provided’ for just that purpose of alignment, nor is that alignment ‘guaranteed’”
(Jones 2006, 44). What Jones suggests is that for Williams (as well as for the Marx of the Bru-
maire) formal and structural correspondences exist and conditioning processes take place be-
tween base and superstructure. However, these interrelations are neither fixed or trans-historical
nor static but they always are dynamic, engaged in a constant process of flux and transformation.
This process in turn, is governed by specific socio-historical developments. Higgins, by contrast,
argues that Williams largely abandoned Marx’s base-superstructure analogy, even though Wil-
liams retained – somewhat contradictorily – the notion of a certain determination of the social
totality. As Higgins wonders, “can his [Williams’] rejection of the base and structure [sic] model
really be intended to deny the fundamental Marxist emphasis on the determination by the
economy of the social totality, of however final an instance?” (1999, 123)
 43
nur ein juristischer Ausdruck dafür ist, mit den Eigentumsverhältnissen, in
dem sie sich bisher bewegt haben. Es tritt dann eine Epoche sozialer Revolu-
tion ein. Mit der Veränderung der ökonomischen Grundlage wälzt sich der
ganze ungeheure Überbau langsamer oder rascher um. In der Betrachtung
solcher Umwälzungen muß man stets unterscheiden zwischen der materiel-
len, naturwissenschaftlich treu zu konstatierenden Umwälzung in den öko-
nomischen und den juristischen, politischen, religiösen, künstlerischen oder
philosophischen, kurz, ideologischen Formen, worin sich die Menschen
dieses Konflikts bewußt werden und ihn ausfechten. (MEW XIII, 8-9)

In this passage that is almost as often misinterpreted as it is quoted, Marx construes

a highly complex societal model. In my reading I will adopt the perspective of the
alternative Marxist tradition (associated with Gramsci, Lukàcs, Goldmann, Negri,
etc.) that, in contrast to orthodox Marxism, emphasises the role of consciousness
in effecting material change. As Frederic Jameson asserts, this tradition “of a more
contemporary ‘Western’ and ‘philosophized’ or ‘ontologized’ Marxism” has formed
a vital corrective to “that wholesale rejection of the superstructures which charac-
terized so-called orthodox Marxism” (cf. 2009, 139). Gramsci forcefully contests
such a dismissal of the superstructure in the Prison Notebooks:

Economy and ideology. The claim (presented as an essential postulate of

historical materialism) that every fluctuation of politics and ideology can be
presented and expounded as an immediate expression of the structure, must
be contested in theory as primitive infantilism, and combated in practice
with the authentic testimony of Marx, the author of concrete and political
works. […] The proposition contained in the Preface to A Contribution to
the Critique of Political Economy to the effect that men acquire consciousness
of structural conflicts on the level of ideologies should be considered as an af-
firmation of epistemological and not simply psychological and moral value.
(Gramsci 2000, 190 & 192; my emphasis)9

9 I cannot engage with here Gramsci’s both highly influential and elusive notion of ‘hegemony’ as
an alternative to the base-structure analogy, since would require an extended discussion of and
engagement with it. Not only would this extend beyond the scope of this book, but the heuris-
tic value of hegemony for this study on 19th-century radical discourse would also be debatable,
since this concept is very closely linked to 20th-century formations of capitalist state and society.
According to Stuart Hall, it inquires into “the nature of the capitalist state in both its ‘normal’
and its exceptional forms (it was one of those exceptions, after all – the fascist state of Musso-
lini –which put [Gramsci] behind bars)” (177, 63). For concise elucidations of hegemony, see
for instance Anderson 1976, McLennan 1980, 184-187 and Williams 1977, 108-114, 1983c &
2005, 37-40 and Ransome 1992, 133-155.
44

This aspect of the base-superstructure analogy that Gramsci here emphasises –

that ideology functions not merely as a means of delusion but also of acquiring
an awareness of the basic conflicts – is of fundamental importance to this study.
Drawing on such Western Marxist thought, I will argue that the famous passage
from the preface to Zur Kritik der politischen Ökonomie posits a dialectical rela-
tionship, a dynamic correspondence, an interactional process between what Marx
regards as the conflicts on the level of the material base and what he terms the
“ideologischen Formen,” in which humans become conscious of these basic strug-
gles. While the ideological forms cannot directly influence – let alone determine –
the socioeconomic changes at the base, they are pivotal in gaining awareness of
the struggles and conflicts that are emerging at the material level. The ideological
forms provide key means to transform the struggle against the existing socioeco-
nomic conditions from an unconscious – or at most semiconscious – protest and
rebellion to a conscious and directed socio-revolutionary fight against them. As the
verb “ausfechten” suggests (the root ‘fechten’ denotes physical confrontation with
sharp weapons such as sword or sabre), the mental and psychological fight both
corresponds and is closely linked to the actual physical social revolution, which in
itself is seen as an enduring process rather than a singular event.10 While the socio-
material changes and tensions are the driving forces of revolutionary action and
change, only once these underlying socioeconomic contradictions have been raised
from unconscious to a conscious level can the process of actively and purposefully
transforming them begin.11
It is this dialectical relationship between changes at the base – awareness of it
gained through the ideological forms and subsequent directed socio-revolution-
ary action – that has often been unduly simplified by critics of Marx. Given the
condensed and easily misleading formulation of the base-superstructure model in
the preface Zur Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, it is tempting indeed to reduce

10 I am grateful to Terence M. Holmes for pointing out the key function of the verb “ausfechten”
in this passage.
11 Of course Marx is the last to claim that a semiconscious, socio-revolutionary workers’ revolt is
not possible. He asserts, however, that such protest is neither likely to be successful nor that it
will decisively advance the international struggle for the emancipation of the proletariat. He
makes this point in his “Randglossen” essay (1844). There he contrasts the Silesian Weavers’
Revolt of 1844, which he considers as the first conscious workers’ uprising, with previous ones
that purportedly lacked such proletarian class consciousness. He particularly mentions the Lyon
Weavers’ Revolts of 1831 and 1834. In a rather patronising way, he alleges that the revolts of the
Lyon silk weavers were doomed to fail right from their onset, since the revolted workers had no
clear awareness of what their social identity or their goals as proletarians should be (see Marx &
Engels 1975b ff. II, 461).
 45

Marx’s interactional model to one of a straightforward economic determinism. For

example, Hayden White, commenting on this passage in his study Metahistory,
misses out on this dialectical element in the relationship between base and super-
structure that makes possible a directed socio-revolutionary movement in the first
place. Understanding ‘ideological forms’ as merely “publicly sanctioned forms of
both consciousness and praxis” and not also oppositional, revolutionary forms, he
turns Marx’s complex interactional model into a simply causal relationship with a
built-in time delay between cause and effect. He employs the famous ‘lag’-theory
between the transformation on the levels of the base and the subsequent ones
on the level of the superstructure that invariably and mechanistically follow the
material transitions. It is significant that White here in his ‘paraphrase’ of the pas-
sage from the preface does not at all cite from the text, since doing so might risk
invalidating his claims.

As can be seen from this passage, for Marx, significant causal efficacity [sic]
proceeds from the Base to the Superstructure by a direct, not dialectical
path. There is a lag between the causal forces that promote social transfor-
mations and between social transformations and cultural changes, but this
lag is inertial […] Only after a new mode of production has been established
as the dominant one in a given society can the publicly sanctioned forms
of both consciousness and praxis themselves be established, in new laws, a
new form of state organization, a new religion, a new art, and so on. (White
1973, 305; White’s emphasis)

Further ignoring the pronounced socio-revolutionary overtones to this passage and

the possibility of ideological forms that are subversive of the present socioeconomic
order, White further maintains that the only “dialectical” relationship in Marx’s
model can be found in “the mode of transition from one form of publicly sanctioned
consciousness to another” (305; White’s emphasis). Such a reading of Marx’s notion
of ideology, however, fails to explain how a socio-revolutionary movement that
aims to transform the existing socioeconomic order could develop at all. White (as
well as many other analysts of this passage) seems to suggest that Marx propagates
a materialist economic determinism that dismisses the superstructure as little else
than an idealist, ideological delusion. Yet, as Stuart Hall (who is very critical of this
passage as he considers it as an “over-condensed paragraph”) insists, neither here in
the preface Zur Kritik der politischen Ökonomie nor in Die deutsche Ideologie is the
relationship between base and superstructure “phrased uni-directionally” (1977,
48).
46

1.2.2 Excavating the Social Material? The Role of Ideological Forms in Marx’s
‘Science’ of History and Revolution

In contrast to White and others, I will maintain that this passage from the preface
Zur Kritik der politischen Ökonomie is not distorted by an excess of materialistic
thought but, on the contrary, does not go far enough in embracing materialism.
Marx seems caught up in an idealist illusion, when he wants to turn ‘historical
materialism’ into an exact science. In grip of 19th-century positivist thought, Marx
asserts that in contrast to the transitions of consciousness at the level of ideological
forms – the material changes at the level of the base, “die Umwälzungen in den
ökonomischen […] Formen” can be ascertained with the exactness of natural sci-
ence, “naturwissenschaftlich treu.” To state, however, that ‘scientific materialism’ is
an exact, empirical science would constitute an idealist fallacy.12 As Claude Lefort
points out, Marx’s tenet that there could be such a science that transcends ide-
ology stands in obvious contradiction to his project of exposing the ideological
positions inherent in all political, philosophical, scientific, and artistic discourse.
Marx “himself yielded to the temptation to occupy this position of externality by
investing the positive sciences with the certainty which he had stripped away from
philosophy” (Lefort 1986, 191).13
As astute as Lefort’s criticism is, one should also consider that Marx’s con-
ception of ‘natural science’ differs considerably from the dominant understand-
ing. As Marx maintains in the third manuscript of the Ökonomisch-philosophische
Manuscripte (1844), the natural sciences have so far been based on the ideological
delusion of conducting their abstract inquiries in separation from social human
existence. Marx’s ‘natural science,’ however, aims exactly to overcome this idealistic
split from real life and study the social and economic process: “die Naturwissen-
schaft [wird] ihre abstrakt materielle oder vielmehr idealistische Richtung verlieren
und die Basis der menschlichen Wissenschaft werden” (Marx & Engels 1975b ff. II
272; Marx’s emphasis).14 Such a conception of natural science, however, incorpo-
12 A similar allegation of an idealist fallacy could be made against Terry Eagleton’s structuralist at-
tempt to establish a Marxist ‘science of the text’ (cf. 1978, 64-101).
13 Similarly, Raymond Williams also criticises this positivist trait in Marx’s understanding of ‘sci-
ence’ that manifests itself in a belief in “the actual progress of scientific rationality” characteristic
of the age: “Though the object of inquiry had been radically changed – from ‘man’ and ‘the
world’ to an active, interactive, and in a key self-creating material social process – it was sup-
posed, or rather hoped, that the methods, or at the least the mood [of science], could be carried
over” (1977, 63).
14 The established acronym MEGA will be used to mark any further quotations from this still
unfinished critical edition of Marx and Engels’ works.
 47

rates not only economy and sociology avant la lettre, but also the humanities. This
science could perhaps be best termed a holistic, interdisciplinary form of social
anthropology.

Die Geschichte selbst ist ein wirklicher Theil der Naturgeschichte, des Wer-
dens der Natur zum Menschen. Die Naturwissenschaft wird später eben-
sowohl die Wissenschaft von d[em] Menschen, wie die Wissenschaft von
d[em] Menschen die Naturwissenschaft unter sich subsumiren: es wird eine
Wissenschaft sein. Der Mensch ist der unmittelbare Gegenstand der Natur-
wissenschaft […]. (MEGA II, 272; Marx’s emphasis)

Moreover, Marx’s professed intentions to pursue his inquiries with the exactitude
of the natural sciences stand in sharp contrast to the philosophical scepticism that
characterises most of his early work. Ironically, Marx’s lifelong project, of becom-
ing conscious of the socioeconomic foundations, contradictions, and struggles of
capitalist society, is for the most part not characterised by the ‘hard’ empiricism
that the natural sciences claim as their basis. His greater project was driven rather
by the desire to trace the fluid and shifting interactions between the social mate-
rial and the ideological, between the political manifestations and social content,
and between a surface view on history and one that aims to elucidate its deep-
structures. As Raymond Williams notes, “the deliberate references to and analogies
from ‘natural science’, to describe the essentially critical and historical work that
was actually undertaken,” are ill-fitting categories for Marx’s social hermeneutics
(1977, 63; Williams’ emphasis). One might even argue that, in his quest for the
hidden social and economic meaning of political and historical events, Marx could
be better compared to a social psychoanalyst than a ‘hard’ economist.15
In this critical, hermeneutic process the scrutiny of the ideological forms is
crucial as their analysis yields insights into social consciousness and the fraught
relationship of ideology to the social process of production and into the material
changes that occur at the level of the base. For my project of investigating the shift-
ing revolutionary discourse, the function of ideological forms is doubly important.
As pointed out, ideological forms constitute a means to become aware of the trans-
formations and conflicts that are taking place at the level of the base. They are also
a means to develop new concepts and scenarios of revolutionary theory and action
with the aim to ultimately change relations at the basic material level. Being reflec-
15 For instance Slavoj Žižek argues for such a parallel between Marx’s method of social analysis and
that of psychoanalysis. As he claims, “there is a fundamental homology between the interpreta-
tive procedure of Marx and Freud – more precisely, between their analysis of commodity and of
dreams” (2008, 3).
48

tions both on the social status quo and on ways to alter it, all textual documents in
which the ideological forms manifest themselves (be it a socially critical poem by
an aristocratic-bourgeois author such as Shelley or a pamphlet by contemporary
labourers and workers) constitute equally valid ‘data’ for this study. In spite of the
commonly accepted notion that one text is a ‘fictional artistic’ artefact and the
other a ‘socio-political document,’ as ideological forms they both play a produc-
tive part in the creating an awareness of the contradictions at the level of base and
of the tensions between official ideology and material reality. Both harbour traces
of the authors’ social consciousness, as individuals as well as members of a certain
class, even if their awareness turns out be a form of ‘false,’ or more accurately, lim-
ited consciousness.
Marx maintains this in an alternative formulation of the base-superstructure
model in Der achtzehnte Brumaire des Louis Bonaparte (1852), which, according
to Gramsci, is “[p]articularly important” (2000, 190) to combat the caricature of
Marx as a primitive materialist. It stipulates that ‘ideology’ and ‘consciousness’ are
not mere by-products that mechanically arise out of a given form of social existence,
but classes actively create their social ideas on the basis of their material existence.
The ensuing tensions and contradictions between individual consciousness and
class-consciousness, between class tradition and innovation, and between ideologi-
cal (mis)conceptions and social action display the creatively productive element that
is implicit in the ideological forms.

Auf den verschiedenen Formen des Eigentums, der sozialen Existenzbedin-

gungen, erhebt sich ein ganzer Ueberbau verschiedener und eigenthüm-
lich gestalteter Empfindungen, Illusionen, Denkweisen und Lebensan-
schauungen. Die ganze Klasse schafft und gestaltet sie aus ihren materiellen
Grundlagen heraus und aus den gesellschaftlichen Verhältnissen, die ihnen
entsprechen. Das einzelne Individuum, dem sie durch Tradition und Erzie-
hung zufließen, kann sich einbilden, daß sie die eigentlichen Bestimmungs-
gründe und den Ausgangspunkt seines Handelns bilden. […] Und wie man
im Privatleben unterscheidet zwischen dem, was ein Mensch von sich meint
und sagt, und dem, was er wirklich ist und thut, so muß man noch mehr in
geschichtlichen Kämpfen die Phrasen und Einbildungen der Parteien von
ihrer wirklichen Organisation und ihren wirklichen Interessen, ihre Vorstel-
lung von ihrer Realität unterscheiden. (MEGA XI, 121-122; my emphasis)

In this passages Marx stresses the relative autonomy of the ideological forms much
more strongly than in the corresponding formulation of the base-superstructure
analogy in the preface Zur Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie. The ideological forms
 49

arise out of the socio-historic struggles but they do not relate to the shifting forms
of property in any given mechanistic way. This means, while the forms of con-
sciousness are related and correspond to the basic struggles, they are not merely their
passive products. Far from it, ideology here is considered to significantly influence
the actions of members of a certain class, even though the idealist notion of the
autonomous individual that acts fully consciously according to what she or he
considers their own motivations remains a delusion. Hence far from being a mere
passive product of the base, ideology here has a strong impact on the actions of
members of a certain class. As Williams emphasises, Marx’s Brumaire essay forms
“the source of the important modern Marxist conception of homology, or formal
correspondence, between certain kinds of art and thought and the social relations
within which they are shaped” (1983, 53).16 While the forms of class-conscious-
ness that we find on the ideological level are thus quite unlikely to ‘accurately’ re-
present genuine class interests, they, nevertheless, wield considerable influence over
historic events. Marx insists – and at the same time powerfully demonstrates – in
Der achtzehnte Brumaire that these forms of consciousness may powerfully influ-
ence history since individuals of a certain class will (mis)take them as the basis for
their political and social actions.17 As Michael Vester points out, such a notion
of the relative autonomy of the ideological forms, constitutes a major conceptual
shift away from “die Vorstellungen des jungen Marx” and in particular away from
the “Annahme, dass eine ‘objektive’ soziale Lage (etwa Klassenunterdrückung) ‘ei-
gentlich’ ein antagonistisches Klasseninteresse (Opposition gegen die unterdrück-
ende Klasse) und Klassenhandeln (Kampf um die politische Macht) nach sich zie-
hen müsse” (2000, 322).18 The contradictions between class-consciousness and the
actions of a class on the one hand, and the genuine, socioeconomic conditioned,

16 For a dense discussion of Goldmann’s notion of homology and its relevance to Williams, see
Jones 2006a, 68-76.
17 Gramsci considers the notion of ‘error’ in Marx as a key counterargument against allegations
that Marx was a mechanical materialist: “Mechanical materialism does not allow for the pos-
sibility of error, but assumes that every political act is determined, immediately by the structure,
and therefore as a real and permanent (in the sense of achieved) modification of the structure”
(Gramsci 2000, 191).
18 While Michael Vester seems to suggest that this fundamental paradigm shift only occurred in
20th-century Neo-Marxist thought, I would strongly argue that it can already be discerned in
Marx’s works after Das Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei (1848), not to mention Gramsci
and other alternative Marxists: “Den Bruch mit dem Schema eines Dualismus von objektiver
Klassenlage und subjektivem Klassenbewusstsein vollzog Raymond Williams 1958 in seiner
kulturhistorischen Untersuchung Culture and Society. Er verstand Klasse als realen sozialen und
kulturellen Beziehungszusammenhang” (2004, 323).
50

material class-interests on the other, will be of pivotal importance for my discus-

sion of the Marxist poetics of revolution in Chapter 4.
The complex relationship between social thought, ideology, and social action is
also of particular relevance to the concept of social revolution. As Marx suggests in
the more famous formulation of the base-superstructure analogy from the “Vor-
wort Zur Kritik der politischen Ökonomie,” the ideological forms become especially
important during the “Epoche der sozialen Revolution.” During such a period the
material forces of production enter into an irreconcilable contradiction to the con-
temporary socioeconomic system of production. Apart from experiencing them
firsthand in their material consequences, it is also through the ideological forms
that humans become aware of the ensuing conflicts at the level of material produc-
tion, of the profound transitions that are taking place. In Marx’s dialectical model,
the new social system emerging from social revolution constitutes a synthesis that
sublates the antithetical contradictions of the previous system while at the same
time creating new ones. This process does not take place mechanistically with eco-
nomic forces as the sole motor of change – as a quasi-divine mover of history – but
it is fundamentally dependent on human agency.
While an imprecise reading of the passage from the preface Zur Kritik der
politischen Ökonomie might indeed convey the impression of a mechanistic eco-
nomic determinism, Marx strongly stresses elsewhere that this is not the case. While
human agency is conditioned and limited by the given material circumstances
and contradictions, socio-revolutionary and world historic changes can only be
achieved if humans alter the social material in an often heroic struggle against the
existing circumstances, and thus also themselves. As Marx emphasises in the third
of his “Thesen zu Feuerbach” (written 1845), distancing himself from any ‘crude’
materialism, revolutionary practice involves both a transformation of the circum-
stances and a transformation of one’s self: “Das Zusammenfallen des Ändern[s] der
Umstände und der menschlichen Tätigkeit oder Selbstveränderung kann nur als
revolutionäre Praxis gefaßt und rationell verstanden werden” (MEW III, 6; Marx’s
emphasis). Although Marx has been accused numerous times of economic de-
terminism, his outlook on human agency is ultimately firmly anti-deterministic.
As he insists in Der achtzehnte Brumaire, “[d]ie Menschen machen ihre eigene
Geschichte, aber sie machen sie nicht aus freien Stücken unter selbstgewählten,
sondern unter unmittelbar vorgefundenen, gegebenen und überlieferten Um-
ständen” (MEGA XI, 96-97). Human history is not mechanistically driven by a
predetermined force but rather by a constant and active struggle against historical
and socioeconomic determination. Although any historical analysis has to consider
the specific socioeconomic relations at a given historical moment, it is the dual
 51

role of humans as playwrights and performers of their own historical drama that
Marx considers as the starting point for a novel ‘social history’ avant la lettre. As he
maintains in Das Elend der Philosophie (written 1846-1847):

[…] man [sieht] sich notwendigerweise gezwungen, im einzelnen zu unter-

suchen, welches die Menschen des 11. und die des 18. Jahrhunderts waren,
welches ihre jedesmaligen Bedürfnisse, ihre Produktivkräfte, ihre Produkti-
onsweise, die Rohstoffe ihrer Produktion, welches endlich die Beziehungen
von Mensch zu Mensch waren, die aus allen diesen Existenzbedingungen
hervorgingen. Alle diese Fragen ergründen, heißt das nicht, die wirkliche,
profane Geschichte der Menschen eines jeden Jahrhunderts erforschen, die-
se Menschen darstellen, wie sie in einem Verfasser und Schausteller ihres
eigenen Dramas waren? Aber von dem Augenblick an, wo man die Men-
schen als die Schausteller und Verfasser ihrer eigenen Geschichte hinstellt,
ist man auf einem Umweg zum wirklichen Ausgangspunkt zurückgekehrt,
weil man die ewigen Prinzipien fallengelassen hat, von denen man ausging.
(MEW IV, 135)

Marx here strongly refutes the notion that there could exist any general abstract
force that would ‘eternally’ condition human action. Instead to reconstruct history
and to understand the contemporary context means to be aware both of the specific
historical material and social conflicts that condition human existence at that spe-
cific historical point and of the fight that humans put up against any determination
by these forces.
The poignant question that Marx – as well as most other contemporary social-
ist revolutionary writers – is concerned with is how this decisive transition from
determination to action, from passive suffering to revolutionary agency could take
be effected? In the earlier Marx, the ideological forms seem to play a key role in this
shift, as they can contribute to generating an awareness of the root causes that are
responsible for the abject condition of the oppressed classes. They could be seen as
a means by which humans will first become conscious of the socioeconomic con-
tradictions and forces that are subject to. Subsequently, these social insights will
enable humans to struggle against them. Vital to the process of gaining an authen-
tic awareness of one’s true social being, of one’s social class identity, of the conflicts
and contradictions on the level of the material basis, the ideological forms may
provide a necessary precondition for conscious and directed socio-revolutionary
action. As Marx and Engels assert in Die deutsche Ideologie, such consciousness of
the severity of contemporary social and socioeconomic contradictions lies at the
heart of any focused socio-revolutionary impulse. Yet such consciousness must be
52

followed by material action since mere theorising about the social ills is simply not
enough to effect any significant change. As Marx and Engels insist in a fragmentary
passage in Die deutsche Ideologie, ‘communism’ means the transformation of reflec-
tion into revolutionary action:

[Feuerbach] will das Bewußtsein über diese Tatsache etablieren, er will also,
wie die übrigen Theoretiker, nur ein richtiges Bewußtsein über ein bestehen-
des Faktum hervorbringen, während es dem wirklichen Kommunisten da-
rauf ankommt, dies Bestehende umzustürzen. […] … sich in Wirklichkeit
und für den praktischen Materialisten, d.h. Kommunisten, darum handelt,
die bestehende Welt zu revolutionieren, die vorgefundnen Dinge praktisch
anzugreifen und zu verändern. (MEW III, 42, emphasis in text)

This contention is of course underpinned by Marx’s transformation of philosophy

from abstract contemplation into a blueprint for revolutionary practice, as it most
famously announced in the eleventh of his “Thesen on Feuerbach” (1845): “Die
Philosophen haben die Welt nur verschieden interpretiert; es kömmt drauf an, sie
zu verändern” (MEW III, 7; Marx’s emphasis). As Stathis Kouvelakis states, this
does not mean, however, that philosophy “makes an illusory flight towards non-
philosophy” but instead moves towards a philosophy of practice: “What is lost is
philosophy as an isolated activity, existing in itself and surveying the world from
on high” (2003, 239). To assume, however, that any decisive socio-revolutionary
change could ever be achieved by a mere transition in the ideological forms, in
consciousness, or even in revolutionary theory constitutes a blatant idealist fallacy.
In a radical, materialist inversion of existing idealist suppositions, Marx and Engels
maintain that material, socio-revolutionary change is the driving force of history
rather than intellectual change, praxis rather than theory. A materialist conception
of history

[…] hat in jeder Periode nicht, wie die idealistische Geschichtsanschauung,

nach einer Kategorie zu suchen, sondern bleibt fortwährend auf dem wirk-
lichen Geschichtsboden stehen, erklärt nicht die Praxis aus der Idee, erklärt
die Ideenformationen aus der materiellen Praxis und kommt demgemäß
auch zu dem Resultat, daß alle Formen und Produkte des Bewußtseins
nicht durch geistige Kritik, durch Auflösung ins “Selbstbewußtsein” oder
Verwandlung in “Spuk”, „Gespenster”, “Sparren” etc., sondern nur durch
den praktischen Umsturz der realen gesellschaftlichen Verhältnisse, aus
denen diese idealistischen Flausen hervorgegangen sind, aufgelöst werden
können – daß nicht die Kritik, sondern die Revolution die treibende Kraft
 53
der Geschichte auch der Religion, Philosophie und sonstigen Theorie ist.
(MEW III, 38)

This study adheres to the conviction that revolutionary theory and discourse never
cause revolution: Solely the concrete action of people can achieve socio-revolution-
ary change. I will also largely subscribe to Marx and Engels’ notion here that the
revolutionary events and praxis are the driving force of revolutionary discourse,
and not vice versa. Yet this does not mean that the revolutionary discourse is con-
sidered as illusory or inconsequential. On contrary, it is vital to gain clarity about
the status quo and dispel any illusions about it. As I will outline in the following
subchapter, the perspective on revolutionary discourse as part of the ideological
forms in the Marxist sense will help to clarify its importance both for the revolu-
tionary process and its historical reconstruction.

1.2.3 Social Discourse – Social Consciousness – Social Change? Revolutionary

Discourse as an Ideological Form

One of the age-old paradoxes is that, by definition, revolutionary discourse and

literature aim to have a significant political and/or social impact but, as history
has shown, have rarely, if ever achieved these goals. The observation of literature as
an ideological form might go some way to account theoretically for this fact. For
Marx, art, philosophy, politics, etc., constitute one of the secondary social practices
through which humans potentially acquire consciousness of their social being. As
a superstructural form, art occupies the same precarious position in the process of
gaining consciousness as philosophy does: It can either contribute to achieving an
adequate awareness of one’s social being or can reaffirm an ideologically distorted
‘false consciousness,’ as for instance German idealism has allegedly done. Such
false consciousness is epitomised in the ideology of contemporary German idealist
philosophy that disregards the material reality and apotheosises autonomous con-
sciousness. Extending their radical critique beyond philosophy Marx and Engels
seem to suggest, through the famous camera-obscura analogy from Die deutsche
Ideologie, that the entirety of contemporary bourgeois ideological forms (and thus,
by extension, most of bourgeois literature) promote falsely distorted conscious-
ness that is geared towards securing and sustaining the socioeconomic status quo.
The French Marxist philosophers Etienne Balibar and Pierre Macherey go as far
as to argue that this function of social control is the sole purpose of all ideological
54

forms (including literature). In their essay “On Literature as an Ideological Form”

(1978) they claim that literature acts predominantly as an ideological form of the
dominant class. They therefore assign to art the ideological aim to obscure the ma-
terial and class contradictions through its ‘aesthetic effect’ rather than to contribute
to a consciousness of them. Drawing upon Althusser’s notion of an all-pervasive
‘Ideological State Apparatus,’ Balibar and Macherey argue that literature exercises
a subtle “ideological domination-effect” (1992, 49). They even regard it as “the
privileged agent of ideological subjection, […] the subjection of individuals to
the dominant ideology, the dominance of the ideology of the ruling class” (51).
Without wanting to deny that cultural products (including literature) often have
this function, I find that such an apodictic assertion promotes a reductionist con-
ception of ideological forms.19
Even in their distorted representation, material conflicts might be visible for
the conscious observer. If consciousness is not blinded by the dazzling and inverted
incorporation of the social material into ideology, the observer’s consciousness may
provide the corrective lens to rectify the inverted image, as Marx and Engels imply
through their camera-obscura analogy:

Das Bewußtsein kann nie etwas Anderes sein als das bewußte Sein, und das
Sein der Menschen ist ihr wirklicher Lebensprozeß. Wenn in der ganzen
Ideologie die Menschen und ihre Verhältnisse wie in einer Camera obscura
auf den Kopf gestellt erscheinen, so geht dies Phänomen ebensosehr aus
ihrem historischen Lebensprozeß hervor, wie die Umdrehung der Gegen-
stände auf der Netzhaut aus ihrem unmittelbar physischen. (MEW III, 26)

Yet for Marx and Engels’ camera-obscura analogy, the deceptive ‘reality effect’ of
the ideological image of the camera obscura seems still much more pertinent than
the ‘correction’ of an inverted ideological image through the observers’ conscious-
ness.20 I would argue that this analogy does not primarily promote a view of ideol-
ogy as a ‘reflection’ of the real life processes – however inverted and distorted – nor
of ideology as ‘false consciousness’ (common readings of this passage), but rather

19 In an essay on Macherey and Marxist literary theory, Terry Eagleton also identifies such “so-
ciological functionalism and reductionism” in their conception: “‘Literature’ becomes no more
than the functional support of a particular ideological apparatus in an argument which is con-
siderably too narrow, homogenizing, and specific to the history of France” (1986b, 20).
20 It is highly likely that Marx and Engels were aware that the image of the camera obscura could
be corrected. Indeed, as early as 1570 the Italian scientist Giovanni Battista della Porta corrected
the inversion of the camera obscura’s projection by adding another lens that rectified the image
(see Sayre 2006, 224).
 55

that it warns of a grave epistemological confusion: to mistake the lifelike ideologi-

cal representation of the material life process for the life process itself. As a ‘mirror
of nature’ the image of camera obscura (and subsequently also those permanent
images taken by photographic cameras, which had just been invented by Niépce,
Daguerre, and Fox Talbot in the late 1830s) pretended to depict reality so truth-
fully and accurately that the difference between image and the material object it
projected became blurred. However, as Roger Sayre emphasises in an entry on
camera obscura in the Encyclopaedia of Twentieth-Century Photography, its photo-
graphic image is an abstract, allegorical representation of reality that needs to be
carefully studied and contemplated by the observer without being taken for reality.
Referring to Plato’s allegory of the cave from his Republic, in which the prisoners
chained to its walls take the shadows that are being projected onto the wall of the
cave for reality, Sayre points out the parallels between this type of projection and
that of the camera obscura: “Like Plato’s cave, in which projected shadows are an
allegory for reality, the camera obscura projects real life, in full color and move-
ment, onto a two-dimensional wall or screen to be observed or contemplated”
(Sayre 2006, 223). Similarly, Marx and Engels in their camera-obscura analogy do
not claim that the ideological representation of the social material is entirely inac-
curate. What would be a mistake, however, is to ignore the ‘reality effect’ of ideol-
ogy and to assume that the ideological image is a truthful representation of real life,
as the idealist societal model claims to represent. As Sayre does in concerning the
projected image of the camera obscura, Marx and Engels also stress the allegorical
propensities of the ideological image. These need to be carefully contemplated by
any keen observer of society without falling into the trap of mistaking the ideologi-
cal representation for an accurate depiction of material life processes.
In Marx’s materialist perspective on historical and societal processes, as is ap-
parent both in the camera-obscura and in the base-superstructure analogy, human
consciousness is not regarded as an autonomous entity as it is within an idealist
conception. It is always viewed as relating to the contemporary material life proc-
esses and the social material struggles. As such consciousness is social – even in its
most distorted form – since it always contains traces of the social material. What
varies widely, however, is the degree of ideological distortion that is involved in the
representation of the social material in consciousness.
For Marx and Engels, consciousness arises out of ideological struggles and man-
ifests itself tangibly in the various ideological forms that are, in turn, related to the
material, social, and socioeconomic struggles. Consequently, the ideological forms
only reveal their status as ‘distorted’ or ‘accurate/authentic’ consciousness when
they are compared to the material reality and the class struggles to which they
56

are linked. My goal throughout this study is to align the revolutionary discourse
with the concrete historical material events and developments that have triggered
its production. Of course, it is an illusion to be able to reconstruct the ‘real’ life
process at any given historical moment, yet nevertheless the attempt to relate texts
to the social material will serve me as an antidote to potential ‘historical idealism.’
Since any text-centred or culture-centred approaches in the humanities fail to take
into account this crucial aspect of Marx’s materialist socio-cultural theory, they
are essentially perpetuating an idealist ideology. In this study I aim to eschew the
idealist fallacy of viewing consciousness and the ideological forms as the determin-
ing force behind human existence: a fallacy which, in the preface to Zur Kritik der
politischen Ökonomie, Marx unmasks in one of his catchiest (and most famous)
chiastic juxtapositions of the Hegelian model. Inverting the idealist model, Marx
at the same time highlights the social nature of being, consciousness, and the ideo-
logical forms: “Es ist nicht das Bewußtsein der Menschen, das ihr Sein, sondern
umgekehrt ihr gesellschaftliches Sein, das ihr Bewußtsein bestimmt” (MEW XII,
8).
This claim – especially when viewed in conjunction with the base-superstruc-
ture analogy – has led to the accusation that Marx privileges the material being
over consciousness. However, considering various ‘alternative’ Marxist perspec-
tives, I have been suggesting that this assertion amounts to a gross simplification
of Marx’s complex, interactional model. As Raymond Williams astutely insists,
to claim that the German verb ‘bestimmen,’ which Marx employs, expresses a
mechanistic determinism in the sense of the English verb ‘to determine’ (the usual
translation for Marx’s term) constitutes a grave misreading (see 2005, 31). I will
suggest that translating this keyword in Marx’s analogy as ‘to condition,’ in the
sense of having a significant influence on something or somebody, comes much
closer to what Marx seems to have had in mind. To use Stuart Hall’s terminology,
what Marx adamantly insists on is “the difference between ‘real relations’ and their
‘phenomenal forms’ – without entertaining for a moment the idea that the ‘phe-
nomenal forms’ are imaginary or do not exist” (1977, 63).21
One of the major problems that prevents us from recognising the important
place that Marx assigns to the ideological forms and consciousness is that ortho-
dox Marxism has unduly emphasised the assumed socio-determinism in Marx’s

21 While Hall here refers specifically to Das Kapital, I would suggest that this fundamental distinc-
tion is already present in Marx’s works from the mid-1840s onwards, albeit in a much more em-
bryonic form. For an attempt to outline how Marx’s 1848 writings and Der achtzehnte Brumaire
des Louis Bonaparte (1852) are founded on the related distinction between latent social content
and manifest political forms and expressions, see for instance my essay (Hörmann 2009).
 57

thought and his apparent bedevilment of ‘consciousness.’ As Williams persuasively

argues, to redress this obvious imbalance in the reception of Marx – as well as to
counter any mechanistic distortions of Marx’s thinking – it is thus necessary to
strengthen the “alternative tradition of Marxism” in which consciousness is regard-
ed as being “social and […] centered in history” and hence “restored as a primary
activity” (2001, 160).22 Only in this sense, as a social and historical consciousness,
is it genuinely possible to regard it as a productive force in the process of socio-
revolutionary change. As the Italian Marxist philosopher Antonio Negri, who be-
longs to this alternative tradition of ‘Western Marxism,’ asserts, for Marx “the
social liberation of the subject” is inextricably and dialectically linked to acquiring
an adequate social consciousness:

In order to rid oneself once and for all from of its antithetical character and
to become hegemonic, [the subject] only lacks one element: recognition [...]
Recognition, consciousness, revolution. [...] The subject is able to develop
itself, to liberate itself from the relations of production in so far as it liber-
ates and dominates them. The self-valorization of the proletarian subject,
contrarily to capitalist valorization, takes the form of auto-determination in
its development. (Negri 1991, 162; Negri’s emphasis)

For the proletarian subject to liberate itself from socioeconomic conditioning re-
quires a conscious, revolutionary act through which it begins to self-determine
it existence. While Negri here could be accused of overemphasising the role of
consciousness in revolutionary change, this triad that he stipulates, “[r]ecognition,
consciousness, revolution,” should not be misunderstood as a straightforward re-
lation of cause and effect. He postulates, rather, a dialectal relationship between
revolutionary change and a change in consciousness, true to the spirit of Marx’s
dialectics. As the alternative Marxist Georg Lukács emphasises, Marx’s dialectical
outlook on society repudiates “einen einfachen Kausalzusammenhang” between
base and superstructure and dismisses the vulgar Marxist assertion that “der Über-
bau eine mechanische, kausale Folge der Entwicklung der Produktivkräfte [ist].”
Marxism denies that anywhere in the world exist “rein einseitige Ursache-Folge-
Beziehungen” (1961, 215-216).

22 Marx advances this view of consciousness as social and historical perhaps most clearly in the
following rhetorical question from Das Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei (1848): “Bedarf
es tiefer Einsicht, um zu begreifen, daß mit den Lebensverhältnissen der Menschen, mit ihren
gesellschaftlichen Beziehungen, mit ihrem gesellschaftlichen Dasein, auch ihre Vorstellungen,
Anschauungen und Begriffe, mit einem Worte auch ihr Bewußtsein sich ändert?” (MEW IV,
480)
58

1.2.4 Literature as Part of the ‘Social Totality’

Both elements of Marx’s analogy, base as well as superstructure, are socially con-
structed and both have a distinct impact on a society. However, this also means
that – unlike in an idealist model – a simple change in the superstructure, in con-
sciousness or in the ideological forms, among them politics, philosophy, and art,
will never alone suffice to achieve any societal change in the socioeconomic base.
Vice-versa, in the alternative Marxist tradition, ideological shifts do not mechanis-
tically and passively follow changes at the basic level. As Lukács emphatically em-
phasises, historical materialism insists that solely the dialectical interaction between
base and superstructure, between the socioeconomic process and the ideologies
produces historical and social development:

[…] der historische Materialismus betont mit besonderer Schärfe, daß

[...] der Gesamtprozeß der gesellschaftlichen, der historischen Entwick-
lung überall als das komplizierte Geflecht von Wechselwirkungen zustande
kommt. [...] Wer in den Ideologien das mechanische, passive Produkt des
ihre Grundlage bildenden ökonomischen Prozesses sieht, der versteht von
ihrem Wesen und ihrer Entwicklung gar nichts, der vertritt nicht den Mar-
xismus, sondern sein Zerrbild, seine Karikatur. (Lukács 1961, 216)

In his “Einführung in die ästhetischen Schriften von Marx und Engels” (1945),
from which this quotation is taken, Lukács not only astutely sums up the complexi-
ties of Marx’s dialectical model, but at the same time also paradigmatically outlines
its implications for the Marxist understanding of literature and Marxist critical
practice. While “Ideologien – darunter Literatur und Kunst –” merely figure “als
sekundär bestimmender Überbau” (1961, 215), Lukács states that they neverthe-
less play a pivotal role in the process of man becoming conscious of his social being
and the entire historically societal process with its transitions and changes.

Die Existenz und das Wesen, das Entstehen und die Wirkung der Literatur
können also bloß [im] gesamthistorischen Zusammenhang des ganzen Sys-
tems verstanden und erklärt werden. Entstehung und Entwicklung der Li-
teratur sind ein Teil des gesamthistorischen Prozesses der Gesellschaft. Das
ästhetische Wesen und der ästhetische Wert der literarischen Werke und im
Zusammenhang damit ihre Wirkung sind ein Teil jenes allgemeinen und
zusammenhängenden gesellschaftlichen Prozesses, in dem sich der Mensch
die Welt durch sein Bewußtsein aneignet. (Lukács 1961, 215)
 59

Literature and art form an integral part of the social totality. As such also partake
in the social process of acquiring consciousness of the social and historical process.
A materialist outlook on literature – as outlined by Lukács in this passage – that
views literature as one interlinked component in the massive system of historical
development (“des gesamthistorischen Prozesses der Gesellschaft”) also calls for
a radically holistic socio-historical literary criticism. It must aim to understand
literature’s place and function in the wider context of the entire societal system
and look beyond the narrow confines of the arts and humanities. As pointed out,
from a Marxist angle, literature and criticism have no history of their own, “keine
Geschichte,” “keine Entwicklung.” Therefore the notion of their autonomy, “der
Schein der Selbständigkeit” (cf. MEW III, 27), only constitutes a bourgeois ide-
ological distortion. Consequently, a materialist critic must repudiate an idealist
conception that regards literature and its criticism as an autonomous system. This
system is structured by a genealogical history of literary epochs and in which dif-
ferent rules and methods apply for the investigation of literary texts than for other
ideological forms.
However, for the purposes of my materialist study of the discursive shift in
revolutionary ideology between 1819 and 1848/49 i.e. the transition from a con-
cept of political revolution to one of social revolution, an approach is needed that
largely disregards these traditional categories and conventional distinctions: one
that is not primarily concerned about whether the poem belongs to the Romantic
period or not, whether the text is fictional or not, or even whether we are confront-
ed with a political-philosophical essay, a historical source such as a pamphlet, or
literary poetical text. Instead, a methodology is needed that subscribes to a holistic
conception of “Wissenschaft” in Marx’s sense, insofar as it “die in der bürgerlichen
Welt modische scharfe Scheidung, Isolierung der einzelnen Wissenschaftszweige
nicht anerkennt,” as Lukács pointedly phrases it (1961, 214):

Weder die Wissenschaft, noch die einzelnen Zweige der Wissenschaft, noch
die Kunst haben ihre selbständige, immanente, ausschließlich aus ihrer ei-
genen inneren Dialektik fließende Geschichte. Die Entwicklung aller wird
bestimmt vom Gang der Gesamtgeschichte der gesellschaftlichen Produk-
tion; nur auf dieser Grundlage können die auf den einzelnen Gebieten auf-
tretenden Veränderungen, Entwicklungen wirklich wissenschaftlich erklärt
werden. (Lukács 1961, 214)

To sum up, Lukács introduces a notion that distinguishes his alternative Marxist
view from an orthodox one: the notion of “social ‘totality’” (Williams 2005, 35)
that posits that art, science, and culture all form part of an entire human social
60

production. Literature is an element of the whole process that simultaneously and

dialectically influences it and is influenced by it.23 In Lukács’ view then, ideologi-
cal forms are not considered as passive means of reflection, but they also have a
certain material impact on the course of the history of societal production, “dem
Gang der Gesamtgeschichte der gesellschaftlichen Produktion.” While the socio-
historic changes in societal production affect the entire system, the ideological
forms are an integral part of it and in turn have repercussions on this system. They
are, therefore, not merely means of reflection on material change, but they also
play a part in directing it. This double bind between the ideological forms and
socio-revolutionary change, which is enabled by Lukas’ modification of the base-
superstructure model, will constitute a key theoretical foundation of my study of
the transitions of revolutionary discourse. While neither Lukas nor I would ever
claim that ideological forms could cause a revolution, the notion of ‘social totality’
helps to account for the indispensable role of the revolutionary discourse in shaping
revolutionary movements and events. Moreover, it enables me to keep up an un-
dogmatic version of the base-superstructure analogy. Unlike Raymond Williams,
who argues that Lukács abandoned the base-superstructure analogy altogether, I
will claim that his adaptation and revision keeps the basic distinction intact.24 As
Williams acknowledges in his late essay on Marx and culture, Marx already had a
“conception of the totality of the social process” (1983a, 30), which exists along-
side the base-structure analogy. Indeed with his notion Lukàcs draws implicitly on
a passage in Die deutsche Ideologie in which Marx and Engels introduce the notion
of social totality as part of the base-superstructure analogy:

Diese [materielle] Geschichtsauffassung beruht also darauf, den wirklichen

Produktionsprozeß, und zwar von der materiellen Produktion des unmittel-
baren Lebens ausgehend, zu entwickeln und die mit dieser Produktionswei-
se zusammenhängende und von ihr erzeugte Verkehrsform, also die bürger-
liche Gesellschaft in ihren verschiedenen Stufen, als Grundlage der ganzen
Geschichte aufzufassen und sie sowohl in ihrer Aktion als Staat darzustellen,
wie die sämtlichen verschiedenen theoretischen Erzeugnisse und Formen
des Bewußtseins, Religion, Philosophie, Moral etc. etc., aus ihr zu erklären
und ihren Entstehungsprozeß aus ihnen zu verfolgen, wo dann natürlich
auch die Sache in ihrer Totalität (und darum auch die Wechselwirkung dieser

23 For a discussion of Lukács’ concept of totality and of its fruitfulness for literary analysis, see
Jameson 1981, 50-57.
24 “The totality of social practices was opposed to this layered notion of a base and a consequent
superstructure” (Williams 2005, 35).
 61
verschiednen Seiten aufeinander) dargestellt werden kann. (MEW III, 37-38;
my emphasis)

Social totality comprises both the basic material processes and the ideological
forms, which stand in a “Wechselwirkung […] aufeinander.” This means not only
that it would be spurious to focus on just one of the elements – instead of on their
interaction – but also that the ideological forms exercise a certain degree of condi-
tioning on the basis transition. As Lukàcs expounds in his ‘totalistic’ interpretation
of the base-superstructure analogy, such a view of the ideological forms, as being
part of a secondarily determining superstructure, implies that they have dialectical
repercussions on the base and on material change as well:

Es ist bekannt, daß der historische Materialismus im wirtschaftlichen Un-

terbau das Richtungsprinzip, die bestimmende Gesetzmäßigkeit in der his-
torischen Entwicklung sieht. Die Ideologie – darunter die Literatur und die
Kunst – figurieren in diesem Zusammenhang im Entwicklungsprozeß nur
als sekundär bestimmender Überbau. (Lukàcs 1961, 215)

As this passage proves, Lukács is not “withdrawing from the claim that there is
any process of determination,” a determination that in Williams’ eyes is the major
merit of the base-superstructure. Such a perspective avoids the danger inherent in a
fuzzy notion of social totality “to empty of its essential content the original Marxist
proposition” (Williams 2005, 36). While accounting for the limited impact of the
revolutionary discourse on material change, a non-dogmatic version of the base-
superstructure analogy avoids subsuming the material under the idealist concept of
a ‘cultural text.’ With all the caveats and modifications I have discussed, I will thus
employ a non-orthodox notion of base and superstructure as the underlying theo-
retical concept for my inquiry into the shifting German and English revolutionary
discourse between 1819 and 1848/49.
62

1.3 From ‘Political’ to ‘Social Revolution’: The Major Paradigm Shift in the
Radical Discourse

1.3.1 The Socio-Revolutionary Turn: Political, Social Revolution and Social

Reform

Before I investigate the ideological transitions in revolutionary discourse from such

a Marxist interdisciplinary, inter-discursive, and intertextual angle, it is first neces-
sary to define the terms ‘political’ and ‘social revolution’ and consider their interre-
lationship. Furthermore, I will also briefly consider the distinction between social
revolution and social reform, as viewed by some of the key writers dealt with in
this study. The main theory on which my investigation is based is the dialectical
perspective on the antithetical nature and hence interdependency of ‘political’ and
‘social revolution’ that Marx was developing in three seminal essays in 1844: “Zur
Judenfrage,” “Einleitung Zur Kritik der Hegel’schen Rechts-Philosophie and “Kri-
tische Randglossen zu dem Artikel ‘Der König von Preußen und die Socialreform:
Von einem Preußen.’” They also mark Marx’s decisive departure from a conception
of a purely political revolution. I will examine the latter two, which, for several rea-
sons, are suited to provide the theoretical backbone of this study. First, any Marxist
approach to the topic necessarily must take into account Marx’s deliberations on
the question of social and political revolution; secondly they constitute a pivotal
basis for any subsequent debate on social and political revolution in spite of their
rather limited impact at the time of their publication; and thirdly his texts, which
fall within the period under investigation, closely reflect and engage with other
contemporary fictional and nonfictional contemporary discourses which deal with
the distinction of political and social revolution.
However, Marx was in no way the first to distinguish between political and
social revolution. Moreover, he strongly draws upon the existing contemporary
European revolutionary discourse. As scholars have conclusively shown (e.g. Ruck-
häberle 1977, Seidel-Höppner 2000 & 2002), the development of a theoretical
distinction between these two types of revolution must be located in the aftermath
of the July Revolution of 1830 which saw the liberal bourgeoisie becoming the
hegemonic class not only in France but also in other European countries. Marx’s
dialectical model of these two concepts of revolution builds strongly upon the divi-
sion that early French socialists and early German proletarian associations in Paris
made (the latter consisting predominantly of workers, artisans, and journeymen).
Examples of these are ‘Der Bund der Geächteten’ and ‘Der Bund der Gerechten,’
 63

which came together during the 1830s. In spite of Marx’s pronounced contempt
for some of the early French socialists and his disdain for – what he pejoratively
called – the German ‘Handwerkerkommunismus,’ he nevertheless subscribed to
the following fundamental distinction between political and social revolution
that they developed. According to Waltraud Seidel-Höppner, this differentiation
was first voiced by the early French socialist Albert Laponneraye in 1835 and was
adopted rapidly by other socialists and the early German proletarian movement
in Paris.25 In the words of Seidel-Hopper’s German translation, Laponneraye in
his essay “Des revolutions” (1835) distinguishes political and social revolution as
follows:

Wir nennen politische Revolution jene, die nur einen Personenwechsel der
öffentlichen Verwaltung oder einen Wechsel der Regierungsform zum Ziel
haben, und soziale Revolutionen solche, die der Basis der Gesellschaft ver-
ändern wollen. (Quoted in Seidel-Hopper 2000, 15)

Seidel-Höppner has astutely summed up and further elaborated on this crucial

distinction between political and social revolution that is also pivotal for my en-
tire study. A political revolution aims to change the governing figures and the
“politischen Strukturen,” whereas a social revolution deeply revolutionises “alle
Daseinsbereiche des gesellschaftlichen Lebens” and secures “politische Mitbestim-
mung aller durch umfassende Verbesserung der Lebensbedingungen.” To achieve
these goals, social revolutionaries do not shy away from “gesetzgeberische Eingriffe
in Eigentums- und Erbrecht, in Produktions- und Verteilungsverhältnisse” (2000,
15).
Moreover, the concept of social revolution has to be distinguished sharply from
the idea of social reform. In contrast to the social revolutionaries, social reformers
do not endorse radical changes in the socioeconomic system such as legally cur-
tailing the right to private property or changing the mode of production and the
distribution of wealth, but aim to alleviate social misery by reforming the bour-
geois-capitalist system from within. Other non socio-revolutionary measures to
improve the social condition of the working class included philanthropic projects
and co-operatives. Both British and German social reformers and philanthropists

25 For example in the pamphlet “Gedanken eines Republikaners”, written by a member of the
‘Bund der Geächteten,’ Theodor Schuster, and published in Paris in 1835, the term social revo-
lution is also used. Schuster regards the slave revolution in Haiti (1791 to 1804), the workers’
uprisings in Lyon in 1831 and 1834 and the Bristol riots of 1831 as the first signs of impending
social revolution across the world. For him these socio-revolutionary revolts form “Brandzeichen
der socialen Revolution” (Schuster 1977, 192).
64

made an important contribution to alleviating the suffering of the working class-

es.26 Among them were the textile manufacturers Robert Owen and John Fielder,
the Tory MP and social reform campaigner Lord Ashley (the later Seventh Earl of
Shaftesbury) in Britain,27 Catholic and Protestant social reformers such as Adolph
Kolping, Johann Hirsch Wichern, the co-operatist Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen,28
and the liberal industrialist Friedrich Harkort in Germany. 29
While I do not want at all to belittle their achievements, there is little evidence
that any of the revolutionary authors discussed in this study subscribed to the
idea of social reform as the solution to the social question. On the contrary, some
of them explicitly spoke out against this idea that they regarded as an ideological
delusion: a form of false consciousness. For instance, Georg Büchner in a letter to
Karl Gutzkow dated the beginning of June 1836 categorically dismisses the no-
tion that upper-class social reform could resolve the social crisis in contemporary
society. Denouncing it as an idealist bourgeois-intellectual fantasy, he endorses
proletarian socio-revolutionary action instead. Advocating the socio-revolutionary
notion of absolute social equality rather than mere political equality, Büchner hopes
that this revolution will destroy modern bourgeois society that he considers to be

26 For a representative selection of contemporary German voices that engaged with the problem of
pauperism and social question in the Vormärz and during 1848/49, see Jantke & Hilger 1965.
27 For a brief and illuminating account of Owen’s life, works, and ideas, see Claeys 1996. For
survey of social reforms in Britain during the period in question, see for instance Roach 1978,
9-142, Rawcliffe 1987 and Dennis & Skilton 1987. For a study into how literature engaged
with both social and political reform, see Brantlinger 1977.
28 For a summary of social ideas in German Catholicism in the 19th century, see Stegmann &
Langhorst 2000, 603-712 and in German Protestantism before 1871, see Jähnichen & Friedrich
2000, 873-922.
29 Not only did Harkort found the ‘Verein für die deutsche Volksschule und Verbreitung gemein-
nütziger Kenntnisse’ (1844), the aim of which was to promote education among the lower
classes, but he also established funds for the sick and mutilated among his workers and started
food cooperatives (See Hardtwig 1998, 124). Walter Conze enthusiastically praises him as one
of the few pioneering liberal entrepreneurs who combined entrepreneurial skills with a sense of
social responsibility (1966, 130). While advocating social reform, he was, however, adamantly
opposed to any proletarian socio-revolutionary activities, as his appeal in “Brief an die Arbeiter”
(1849) shows. In it he distinguishes the unruly and depraved proletarians, “welche stets bereit
sind, über anderer Leute Gut herzufallen und den Krebsschaden der Kommunen bilden” from
the peaceful, “braven Arbeiter.” While he recommends the extermination of the proletarians,
“die Ausrottung dieser Zuchthauskandidaten,” the well-behaved workers merit social reformist
and philanthropic aid: “Diesen ehrenwerten Leute muß geholfen werden durch Hebung der
Gewerbe, Vorschußkassen, guten Unterricht für die Kinder und Sicherstellung gegen Krankheit
und Invalidität” (Harkort 1965, 392-393).
 65

effete. In its place he envisages a socially just system of society that – in his eyes –
the proletariat, and not bourgeois reformers, will create:

Übrigens; um aufrichtig zu sein, Sie und Ihre Freunde scheinen mir nicht
grade den klügsten Weg gegangen zu sein. Die Gesellschaft mittelst der Idee,
von der gebildeten Klasse aus reformieren? Unmöglich! Unsere Zeit ist rein
materiell, wären sie direkter politisch zu Werke gegangen, so wären Sie bald
auf den Punkt gekommen, wo die Reform von selbst aufgehört. Sie werden
nie über den Riß zwischen der gebildeten und ungebildeten Gesellschaft
hinauskommen. Ich habe mich überzeugt, die gebildete und wohlhabende
Minorität […] wird nie ihr spitzes Verhältnis zur großen Klasse aufgeben
wollen. […] Ich glaube man muß in socialen Dingen von einem absoluten
Rechtsgrundsatz ausgehen, die Bildung eines neuen geistigen Lebens im Volk
suchen und die abgelebte moderne Gesellschaft zum Teufel gehen lassen.
[…] Sie mag aussterben, das ist das einzig Neue, was sie noch erleben kann.
(Büchner 2002 II, 440; Büchner’s emphasis)

These lines strongly dismiss social reform in favour of social revolution. Scepticism
about the notion of social reform and a move towards social revolution can also be
observed in considerably less radical authors than the early socialist Büchner. For
instance, Shelley, who occasionally mentions Robert Owen and his social experi-
ments, went considerably beyond this idea of both a paternalistic philanthropism
and a communitarian utopia. In his unpublished essay A Philosophical View on Re-
form (written 1819-1820), Shelley hardly considers such measures to be a solution
to the social crisis in contemporary Britain, as chapter 2 of this study will illustrate.
Instead, in a pronounced socio-revolutionary move, he envisages a redistribution
of wealth and the nationalisation of land, “including the parks and the chases of
rich” and “of the uncultivated districts of the country” (1920, 67).
Robert Owen (1771-1858) is not only important in the context of 1810s and
1820s Britain but also constitutes a pivotal figure for subsequent social reform-
ers as well as social revolutionaries. In spite of criticism both of Owen’s practical
solutions to the social question (such as the founding of model social commu-
nities like the model factory village of New Lanark) and his theories, he had a
considerably large impact on nascent socialism (see for instance Claeys 1987a).
As Gregory Claeys argues elsewhere, Owenite Socialism also played a particularly
important role in Engels’ initial move towards socialism (1985). However, as he
also acknowledges, after 1844 Engels went considerably beyond Owen’s tenets of
66

peaceful social change when he embraced transformation through violent proletar-

ian revolution.30
In the second part of the 1840s the chasm between German Marxists and Brit-
ish Owenite Socialists deepened further. One of the most comprehensive contem-
porary critiques of Owenism from a Marxist angle can be found in Georg Weerth’s
unpublished essay “Geschichte der Chartisten.” Paradigmatically, Weerth fleshes
out the key distinction between social reform and social revolution. He uses the
example of Owen, of his philanthropic and co-operative experiments, to launch a
fundamental critique of all social measures falling short of social revolution. That
Weerth expresses a considerable respect for Robert Owen makes his critique even
more trenchant. Weerth met Owen after the failure of his experimental co-opera-
tive community ‘Harmony’ (originally named ‘Queenwood,’ also known as ‘Har-
mony Hall’) in East Tytherly, Hampshire in 1845. In contrast to Owen, Weerth
states his firm conviction that any such small-scale experiments that do not alter
the socioeconomic basis of society will not achieve lasting social change. As Weerth
alleges, both the community ‘Harmony’ (1839-1845), which went bankrupt, and
Owen’s earlier model village and woollen mill in New Lanark in South West Scot-
land (which he owned or managed from 1800 to the 1820s) were built on the
reformist ideological delusion that social misery and exploitation of the proletariat
could be abolished within the confines of the capitalist socioeconomic order.
Since Weerth, from a Marxist angle, regards social inequality, the unequal dis-
tribution of property, and exploitation as the very basis of the capitalist mode of
production, he sees any social movements as ineffectual that fall short of the socio-
revolutionary goal of rendering the base of contemporary society. Philanthropists,
social reformers, and even socialist utopians like Owen practice a form of social
escapism when they try “aus der Starrheit der noch zur Stunde herrschenden Ei-
gentumsverhältnisse […] liebreich und philanthropisch herauszutreten” (Weerth
1957 III, 325). Although they profess to be altering the unequal distribution and
possession of private property throughout Western contemporary society, they fall
short of this goal. Instead, they attempt to escape from the rigid property relations
30 In Das Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei Marx and Engels distance themselves explicitly
from non-revolutionary socialism. Criticising what they term the “kritisch-utopische Sozialis-
mus” for its refusal to embrace the proletariat as a consciously socio-revolutionary force, they
explicitly include Owenism: “Die eigentlich sozialistischen und kommunistischen Systeme, die
Systeme St.-Simons, Fouriers, Owens usw., tauchen auf in der ersten, unentwickelten Periode
des Kampfes zwischen Proletariat und Bourgeoisie […]. Die Erfinder dieser Systeme sehen zwar
den Gegensatz der Klassen wie die Wirksamkeit der auflösenden Elemente in der herrschenden
Gesellschaft selbst. Aber sie erblicken auf der Seite des Proletariats keine geschichtliche Selbst-
tätigkeit, keine ihm eigentümliche politische Bewegung” (MEW IV 489-490).
 67

of capitalism by founding well intentioned but unrealistic philanthropic or co-op-

erative, socialist projects. Owen epitomises the type of radical social reformer who,
unlike the social revolutionary who endorses physical force, wants to transform so-
ciety “nur durch moralische Gewalt” (Weerth 1956 III, 322). For Weerth, Owen’s
socialism is both idealist and utopian since it wants to effect a transformation of
society by mere peaceful means. Eschewing proletarian social revolution, Owen’s
social-reformist agenda ironically remains within the very confines of the bourgeois
order the economics of which it aims to transcend. “[D]ie Sozialisten, die Anhänger
Robert Owens” stay away from any mass movements, “da sie alles durch die liebe
Moral, auf friedlichem, bürgerlichem Wege zu zwingen suchen,” Weerth mockingly
remarks. Comprising many members of the “Mittelklasse,” they emphatically dis-
sociate themselves from the contemporary British workers’ movement and its rank
and file, “den zerlumpten Chartisten” (1957 II, 72; my emphasis). For the social
revolutionary Weerth, the idea that one could resolve the blatant socioeconomic
contradictions of capitalism without first overthrowing the current political and
socioeconomic order, constitutes a stark – if understandable – delusion. It is such a
premature transformation of society that Owen, fuelled by youthful idealism, mis-
guidedly embarks on, when he tries to alter the relationship between bourgeoisie
and the proletariat immediately by implementing practical moral education and
industrial reform instead of campaigning for socio-revolutionary change:

Es drängte daher den jungen eifrigen Mann [Owen], diese Widersprüche

sofort zu versöhnen, indem er die zwei großen Klassen, der Gesellschaft,
die Besitzenden und die Nichtbesitzenden, über ihre Stellung klar machte,
und ihnen zu zeigen suchte, wie nicht durch die bisherige barbarische Ex-
ploitation der beiden Klassen, sondern nur durch gegenseitige Liebe und
Hilfeleistung der eigentliche Nutzen, das wahre Glück aus jenen großen in-
dustriellen Erfindungen gezogen werden könne, welche das Schicksal nicht
zugunsten einzelner, sondern zum Besten aller verliehen habe. Die Umrisse
des neuen Systems der Gesellschaft, mit dem sich Owen herumtrug, glaubte
er ihrer Richtigkeit nach dadurch am besten erproben können, daß er sie
selbst praktisch in Anwendung brachte. (Weerth 1957 III, 323-324)

According to Weerth, Owen’s grand plan “to restructure human relationships

throughout society” (Royle 1998, 218) is built on false idealist premises about
potential reform both of humans and society.31 Apart from pointing out these so-

31 From a firmly Marxist materialist outlook, Weerth sarcastically comments on the idealist prem-
ises of Owen’s social system as the latter expounds them in his Book of the New Moral World
(1836-1844): “Mit wahrhaft bewunderungswürdiger Weitschweifigkeit hat er darin nachgew-
68

cio-anthropological shortcomings, Weerth also dismisses Owen’s social-reformist

agenda, which he presents – slightly ironically– as ethically highly commendable, if
illusory in a socioeconomic sense. Weerth does not deny the small-scale benefits of
Owen’s social experiments. He even acknowledges that Owen greatly improved the
condition of his workers in New Lanark by providing healthcare and education.
Moreover, describing his visit to the ‘Harmony’ co-operative, Weerth represents
it as an idyllic, patriarchal community, which seemed like “seine große glückliche
Familie […], bei der sich Wohlstand und gute Sitte bis in die kleinsten Details
hinunter zeigte” (1957 III, 328). What Owen overlooks, however, is that his social
and socialist experiments were still subject to capitalism’s categorical imperative: to
reduce the cost of production and maximise profit. Thus, Weerth insists, it came
as no surprise that New Lanark could not compete with the other woollen mills
that still recklessly exploited their workers, or that the ‘Harmony’ co-operative was
doomed to economic failure from its onset; it needed to be viable in spite of its
communitarian principles.32 Ironically, Weerth suggests, Owen inadvertently reaf-
firms the validity of the very economic imperatives of the capitalist society that he
himself criticises. His paradoxical attempts to produce in an economically viable
manner, while at the same time abolishing exploitative work practices, necessarily
had to end in financial disaster, since they violated the fundamental principles of
the dominant socioeconomic order of capitalism. What Owen’s experiments dem-
onstrate is the impossibility of achieving a more socially just mode of production
(and by extension a just society) within the confines of the capitalist socioeconomic
order:

So endete der zweite, ziemlich großartige Versuch, das System Owens prak-
tisch zu verwirklichen. Bei dem ersten in New Lanark hatte Owen selbst die
Kosten bezahlt, bei dem zweiten in Harmony Hall zahlten die Aktionäre

iesen, wie die Menschen nicht sind und und wie sie wohl sein könnten und wie erst dann etwas
mit ihnen anzufangen sei, wenn sie ganz und gar umerzogen wären. Wir gehören nicht zu den
Bewunderern solcher Systeme und halten es jedenfalls für das Beste, die Menschen einstweilen
so zu nehmen, wie sie sind” (Weerth 1957 III, 326).
32 In a seminal study of the ‘Harmony’ community and Owen’s social philosophy and entrepre-
neurial practice, Edward Royle fundamentally revises this still dominant image of Owen as
the economically incompetent and benign idealist philanthrope that Weerth also puts forward.
Royle shows that Owen, rather than being merely a benign philanthrope who in his utopian
scheme lacked any business sense, was often self-interestedly involved in tough business prac-
tices and savvy (sometimes even shady) financial dealings. “Owen’s business methods show the
gentle philanthropist to have had the financial teeth of a shark,” Royle concludes (1998, 17).
 69
die Zeche. 33 Wiederum hatte es sich gezeigt, das trotz aller Ökonomie in
der Einrichtung großer, gemeinschaftlicher Gebäude dennoch ein Kon-
kurrieren mit der übrigen Gesellschaft, deren Prosperität auf dem Elende
der Arbeiter begründet ist, unmöglich wird, wenn die Arbeiter der gemein-
schaftlichen Anlagen viel besser leben wollen als ihre Kollegen da draußen.
(Weerth 1957 III, 329)

Co-operatives do not resolve the fundamental contradiction of capitalist society;

in it wealth can only be acquired by exploiting the workforce. On the contrary,
the economic failure of such ventures highlights the ubiquity of this fundamental
socioeconomic law. Paradoxically subjecting themselves to the laws of capitalism or
fleeing from their grasp into remote regions of the world (such as Owen’s abortive
communitarian colony ‘New Harmony’ in Indiana, USA), Owen’s social utopias
contributed little towards resolving the social conflicts of capitalism. Moreover, as
Weerth pointedly claims, such co-operatives ironically help to perpetuate the exist-
ence of the unequal socioeconomic order they set out to change. Alluding specifi-
cally to Owen’s failed ‘New Harmony’ in the Midwest, Weerth states:

Abgeschnitten und unberührt vom ganzen übrigen Weltverkehr mögen sie

im fernen Westen von Amerika oder sonst in einem Winkel der Welt wohl
gelingen. – solange sich aber eine Gemeinschaft noch den ökonomischen
Gesetzen unterwirft, welche die übrige Welt rings um sie herum regieren,
so lange wird sie auch die Konsequenzen dieser Gesetze tragen müssen.
(Weerth 1957 III, 330)

Rather than futilely – as Owen did – “alle Gouvernements mit Vorschlägen besser-
er gesellschaftlicher Einrichtungen bombardierend” (325), Weerth advocates a
proletarian social revolution by force. It is a waste of potentially revolutionary
energies, as the violent connotations of the present participle “bombardierend”
imply. Only the revolutionary form of social change, he is convinced, would trans-
form the socioeconomic base of contemporary society, its exploitative mode of
production, and thus improve the material living conditions of the proletariat in
a significant and enduring manner. Similar to Büchner in his letter to Gutzkow,
Weerth prophesies that only the ever-growing proletariat, and not bourgeois social

33 Explaining the failure of this project considerably differently from Weerth, Gregory Claeys
maintains that this “impressively large building with lavish fittings” intended by Owen to form
“a symbol of his ideas” was instrumental in the project’s downfall as its construction devoured
“the funds needed for daily operations” (cf. 1996, 264). By contrast, Edward Royle (1998)
insists that one of the principal reasons for the community’s failure was that Owen grossly mis-
calculated the required start capital, turning it into a doomed enterprise from the very start.
70

reformers and philanthropists, will build a lasting and socially just society through
social revolution:

Der Zukunft und einer noch gewaltigern Entwicklung des Proletariats wird
es überlassen bleiben, etwas dauernd Großes und Umfassendes an die Stelle
unsrer heutigen Verhältnisse zu setzen. Die Philanthropie eines Owen ist
nichts im Vergleich zu den Ereignissen, welche die eherne Notwendigkeit
mit sich bringen wird. (Weerth 1957 III, 330)

1.3.2 The Dialectics of Political and Social Revolution

Pronounced distancing from social reform – along with the distancing from a
merely political revolution – lies also at the heart of Marxist social ideology.34 As
pointed out earlier, Marx was neither the first contemporary revolutionary to de-
velop a theory of social revolution (on the contrary when he turned to it in the
mid-1840s, socio-revolutionary ideas had been in existence for at least half a cen-
tury), nor the most influential theorist of social revolution at this time. His theo-
retical considerations, however, are nevertheless central to this study, largely for
three reasons. First, Marx formulates and traces the dilemmas and paradoxes which
were faced by revolutionaries and radical writers alike both most eloquently and
most profoundly. Second, Marx’s insistence on history as a dialectical process and
his persistent self-critique of his earlier positions also throw a spotlight on the shifts
that took place in the revolutionary discourse of the period. Third, his insistence
on the ideological, socio-political, philosophical, sociological, anthropological and
psychological complexities that conceptions of social revolution involve, serve as a
potent ‘antidote’ against the pitfalls of an economic reductionism that easily mars
any debate about social revolution.
Overall, Marx is heavily indebted to his precursors as he follows the basic
premise put forward by the radical socialists of the 1830s. He agrees with their
understanding that social revolution must mean a fundamental transformation of
society that includes core change in the socioeconomic sphere, in the mode of pro-
duction and in the distribution of capital and wealth. For Marx, as for other Ger-
34 In the Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei (1848) Marx and Engels distance themselves starkly
not only from the utopian socialists but also – what they call – “der konservative oder Bour-
geoissozialismus.” By this term they understand the social-reformist faction of the bourgeoisie
which “wünscht den sozialen Mißständen abzuhelfen, um den Bestand der bürgerlichen Gesells-
chaft zu sichern” (MEW IV, 488; emphasis in original).
 71

man revolutionary socialists like Büchner and Weerth, a critique of social reform
and political strategies designed to implement social reform without changing the
socioeconomic order as a whole served as the starting point for his turn towards
social revolution. One of Marx’s first major endorsements of proletarian social
revolution, “Kritische Randglossen zum dem Artikel: ‘Der König von Preußen
und die Socialreform: Von einem Preußen’” (Vorwärts No. 63/7 August 1844),
establishes this concept by distinguishing it both from social reform and politi-
cal revolution. Similar to the views of the French socialists and the early German
proletarian movement, Marx found that political revolution as the violent change
in the system of government was not sufficient to end the exploitation and social
inequality that he regards as fundamentally linked to the bourgeois socioeconomic
order of capitalism. By contrast, radical republicanism, with its insistence on such
political revolution, seeks to redress the social ills by a change in the system of
government. According to Marx, this rationale arises out of a profound ideologi-
cal delusion: the failure even of radical-republican revolutionaries to distinguish
clearly between state and society, i.e. between the system of government and the
societal system:

Der Staat wird im “Staat und der Einrichtung der Gesellschaft”, wie es der
Preuße [Ruge] von seinem König verlangt, den Grund socialer Gebrechen
finden. […] Selbst die radikalen und revolutionären Politiker suchen den
Grund des Übels nicht im Wesen des Staats, sondern in einer bestimmten
Staatsform, an deren Stelle sie eine andere Staatsform setzen wollen. Der
Staat und die Einrichtung der Gesellschaft sind von dem politischen Stand-
punkt aus nicht zwei verschiedene Dinge. Der Staat ist die Einrichtung der
Gesellschaft. (MEGA II, 455; Marx’s emphasis)

As he further alleges, such an abstract, political view of the state, revolution and
society that detaches itself from the real existent material suffering has been the
hallmark of the ideology of all the great bourgeois republican revolutionaries. This
attitude is epitomised by most of the bourgeois protagonists of the French Revolu-
tion and, in particular, by its leading figure Robespierre whom Marx considers as
an especially blatant example of such blindness to the primacy of the social over the
political. Comparable to German philosophical idealists who tend to posit human
will as absolute, he was a political idealist who posited radical political revolution
as absolute. Far from recognising the societal order as the source of material, social
deficiencies, he instead regards socioeconomic inequalities as mere political obsta-
cles to his idealist governmental order of “pure democracy”:
72
Je mächtiger der Staat, je politischer daher ein Land ist, um so weniger ist
es geneigt im Prinzip des Staats, also in der jetzigen Einrichtung der Gesell-
schaft, deren thätiger, selbstbewußter und offizieller Ausdruck der Staat ist,
den Grund der socialen Gebrechen zu suchen und ihr allgemeines Prinzip zu
begreifen. Der politische Verstand ist eben politischer Verstand, weil er in-
nerhalb der Schranken der Politik denkt. Je geschärfter, je lebendiger, desto
unfähiger ist er zur Auffassung socialer Gebrechen. Die klassische Periode
des politischen Verstandes ist die französische Revolution. Weit entfernt im
Prinzip des Staats die Quelle der socialen Mängel zu erblicken, erblicken die
Heroen der französischen Revolution vielmehr in den socialen Mängeln die
Quelle politischer Übelstände. So sieht Robespierre in der großen Armuth
und dem großen Reichthume nur ein Hinderniß der reinen Demokratie.
Er wünscht daher eine allgemeine spartanische Frugalität zu etabliren. Das
Prinzip der Politik ist der Wille. Je einseitiger, das heißt also je vollendeter
der politische Verstand ist, um so mehr glaubt er an die Allmacht des Willens,
um so blinder ist gegen die natürlichen und geistigen Schranken des Willens,
um so unfähiger ist er also die Quelle socialer Gebrechen zu entdecken.
(MEGA II, 456-457; Marx’s emphasis)

The political understanding of revolutionary change eclipses the social ills that, for
Marx, lie at the root of any revolutionary crisis. The republican delusion consists in
the belief that with only the change of political system, from monarchy to a radical
“reinen Demokratie,” the major socioeconomic ill that blights human society will
disappear too: the gap between “der großen Armuth und dem großen Reichtume.”
Such a rationale was also the major ideological flaw of Robespierre terror regime
which claimed to combat poverty by decapitating “die Eigenthümer” (455) instead
of changing the property relations.
While political revolution for Marx’s forms an idealist conception, theories of
social revolution have to draw upon a materialist framework. When Marx insists
that the belief in political revolution, in radical political transformation, as the
panacea for society’s ills, constitutes a form of deluded consciousness, this conten-
tion is of vital importance not merely for his own theory of revolution but also
for the paradigm shift that this study seeks to investigate. It will help to explain,
why idealist scenarios of social revolution (such as Shelley’s) constitute a contradic-
tion in terms. Furthermore, the identification of the ideological blind spot in the
republican concept of political revolution, to regard the social ills as secondary, a
consequence of the political rather than the social system, marks the major starting
point for most revolutionary writers to move towards a concept of social revolu-
tion.
 73

While neither Marx nor French socialists such as Blanqui dismissed the need for
political revolution, they maintained, however, that the solely political emancipation
of an oppressed class by revolutionary means would only lead to the creation of an
equally oppressive class constellation. None of the socialist revolutionaries consid-
ered political revolution as superfluous, even if not all of them were as passionately
committed to overthrowing the government as Blanqui who spent most of his life
in prison for his involvement in insurrectionary activities. It can hardly be over-
emphasised that these two kinds of revolution, the political and the social, are not
mutually exclusive but instead complementary. In spite of Marx’s harsh criticism of
the concept of a purely political revolution, political revolution forms an essential
part of any revolutionary change, including his own. Agreeing with other con-
temporary socialists on the need for political as well as social revolution, the early
Marx envisages a diachronic model in which political revolution has to be followed
by a social revolution. For a social revolution that aims to build a new society is
dependent on a preceding political revolution that topples the existing form of
government and dissolves the old form of social order. First, all vestiges of monar-
chy and autocracy have to be abolished and a democratic system established before
the social revolution can take place. As Marx and Engels stress in the concluding
section of Das Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei (February 1848) on the eve of
the revolutions of 1848, political revolution is always the vital prerequisite for any
ensuing social revolution political. Referring specifically to the German situation,
they declare that “nach dem Sturz der reaktionären Klassen in Deutschland, sofort
der Kampf gegen die Bourgeoisie selbst beginnt” (MEW IV, 493). Until political
revolution has been achieved, however, the communists ally themselves with all
other democratic parties and faction, but not without emphasising their distinct,
ultimately socio-revolutionary aims. This is one reason why Marx is such an ardent
supporter of political revolution and radical republicanism and democracy even
while he is anticipating the future advent of the social revolution. As Marx and
Engels declare in Das Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei:

Mit einem Wort, die Kommunisten unterstützen überall jede revolutionäre

Bewegung gegen die bestehenden gesellschaftlichen und politischen Zustände.
In allen diesen Bewegungen heben sie die Eigentumsfrage, welche mehr
oder minder entwickelte Form sie auch angenommen haben möge, als die
Grundfrage der Bewegung hervor. Die Kommunisten arbeiten endlich
überall an der Verbindung und Verständigung der demokratischen Parteien
aller Länder. (MEW IV, 493; my emphasis)
74

It is already in the “Randglossen” that Marx establishes the theoretical foundation

for this strategic plan for the upcoming German revolution. According to him,
the political revolution that overthrows the old powers has always to be followed
by a social revolution to effect lasting, fundamental change: a position that is also
advanced by Blanqui in the 1830s (see chapter 3). The ensuing process of societal
transformation will eventually (after the proletarian social revolution) lead to the
end of exploitation, class oppression, and social classes, as Marx and Engels will
envisage it four years later in Das Manifest der Kommunistischen Parties (1848). In
a more rudimentary form, Marx already formulates a dialectical relationship of
political and social revolution in the conclusion to the “Randglossen”:

Die Revolution überhaupt – der Umsturz der bestehenden Gewalt und die
Auflösung der alten Verhältnisse – ist ein politischer Akt. Ohne Revolution
kann sich aber der Socialismus nicht ausführen. Er bedarf dieses politischen
Aktes, so weit er der Zerstörung und der Auflösung bedarf. Wo aber seine or-
ganisirende Thätigkeit beginnt, wo sein Selbstzweck, seine Seele hervortritt, da
schleudert der Sozialismus die politische Hülle weg. (MEGA II, 463; Marx’s
emphasis)

While Marx does endorse political revolution as the immediate aim, he does not
consider it as a goal in itself. Instead, he insists that a solely political revolution
is not sufficient. This, he claims, is performed at the cost of the whole system of
society since it only aims – legitimised by a particular ideological theory of govern-
ance – to change society for the benefit of certain circles within it. The socioeco-
nomically oppressed individual who is suffering materially and mentally due to
the exploitation of his labour and alienation from society is not considered in this
concept of political transformation. Those who are suffering disappear underneath
the smokescreen of equality that the ideology of the political revolution creates.
As Marx alleges, the concept of a solely political revolution can only be justified if
one regards society ‘theoretically,’ i.e. from an ideologically distorted angle that is
detached as far “vom wirklichen Leben” as German idealist philosophy:

Die politische Seele einer Revolution besteht […] in der Tendenz der politisch
einflußlosen Klassen ihre Isolirung vom Staatswesen und von der Herrschaft
aufzuheben. Ihr Standpunkt ist der des Staats, eines abstrakten Ganzen, das
nur durch die Trennung vom wirklichen Leben besteht, das undenkbar ist
ohne den organisirten Gegensatz zwischen der allgemeinen Idee und der
 75
individuellen Existenz des Menschen.35 Eine Revolution von politischer Seele
organisirt daher auch, der beschränkten und zwiespältigen Natur dieser Seele
gemäß, einen herrschenden Kreis in der Gesellschaft, auf Kosten der Gesell-
schaft. (MEGA II, 462-463; Marx’s emphasis)

In accordance to the motto from Die deutsche Ideologie to base his new German
anti-idealist materialist philosophy on “wirklichen Individuen, ihre Aktion und
ihre materiellen Lebensbedingungen” (MEW II, 20), Marx here dismisses any at-
tempt to investigate the problem of social and political revolution from an abstract
perspective. Marx argues that such an idealist perspective on revolution is the flaw
of a notion of purely political revolution, which – in his opinion – aims to redress
the isolation of the marginalised classes from the abstract entity of the state and its
government.
Exposing the theory of a merely political revolution as an idealist illusion, he
denies that it is capable of genuine material change as it merely replaces one system
of class domination and exploitation with another. Its basic premise, he main-
tains, is flawed since it refuses to acknowledge the contradiction between “der
allgemeinen Idee” and concrete reality, between an abstract political notion of lib-
eration on the one hand and the actual material and mental enslavement of the
individual on the other. It is incapable of solving the contemporary class conflicts
precisely because it regards society merely from the limited political viewpoint “des
Abstrakten Ganzen.” Caught within an idealist framework, it fails to pay attention
to the socio-revolutionary potential that the social alienation of the proletariat
harbours. The lever for social revolution does not lie in any abstract political or
even social theory but, very tangibly, in the maturing social consciousness and
increasingly socio-revolutionary actions of the proletariat that are driven by the
desire to overcome its alienation. While proletarian alienation was widely observed
and indicted by contemporaries, Marx’s merit consists in placing it at the heart of
the concept of social revolution: a key paradigm shift that I will trace in some of
his early writings.

35 Marx’s critique that an abstract idea could functions as the lever of social change here seems
reminiscent of Büchner’s critique the concepts of bourgeois social reform political revolution.
As pointed out earlier Büchner in a letter to Gutzkow from June 1836 dismisses them of being
founded on an idealist bourgeois “Idee” that cannot live up to the contemporary socioeconomic
reality (cf. Büchner 2002 II, 440).
76

1.3.3 Marx’s Attack on Ruge: The Aporia of an Idealist Conception of Social

Revolution

This crucial theoretical shift in the discourse on political versus social revolution
that Marx outlines in “Randglossen” should be seen in the wider context of Marx’s
turn against idealist theories of revolutionary change. This becomes apparent if
one considers the article’s intertext, Arnold Ruge’s anonymous article “Der König
von Preußen und die Socialreform.” Marx’s “Kritische Randglossen zu dem Artikel
‚Der König von Preußen und die Socialreform. Von einem Preußen’” constitutes
(as its full title suggests) a scathing critique of Ruge’s article on the Silesian Weav-
ers’ Revolt that was written by Marx’s former comrade-in-arms and had appeared
earlier in the same journal (No. 60/27 July 1844).36 Marx aims to prove the ab-
surdity of having an idealist conception of social revolution by refuting Ruge’s key
idealist thesis that socio-revolutionary action requires an all-encompassing political
consciousness. Ruge notes a decisive lack of an “alles durchdringenden politischen
Seele” and of “politische[r] Verstand” in the uprising, as well as in its reception by
the German public. Germany, he argues, is theoretically not yet ready for social
revolution. It lacks any abstract political concept of what social revolution should
achieve. He maintains that directed material socio-revolutionary action is impos-
sible, and thus decisive social transformation will also be stymied:

Die deutschen Armen sind nicht klüger als die armen Deutschen, d. h. sie
sehen nirgends über ihren Heerd, ihre Fabrik, ihren Distrikt hinaus; die
ganze Frage ist von der alles durchdringenden politischen Seele bis jetzt noch
verlassen. Es werden alle Aufstände in Blut und Unverstand ersticken, die
in dieser heillosen Isolirung der Menschen von dem Gemeinwesen und ih-
rer Gedanken von den socialen Prinzipien ausbrechen: erzeugt aber erst die
Noth den Verstand und entdeckt der politische Verstand der Deutschen die
Wurzel der geselligen Noth, alsdannn werden auch in Deutschland diese
Ereignisse als “Symptome einer großen Umwälzung empfunden werden.”
Eine Socialrevolution ohne politische Seele (d. h. ohne die organisierende
Einsicht vom Standpunkt des Ganzen aus) ist unmöglich. (Ruge 1844, 4;
Ruge’s emphasis)

Within the framework of Hegelian dialectics and metaphysics, Ruge here construes
a Neo-Hegelian concept of social revolution. Like Marx, he regards the proletariat

36 Pivotally, they had jointly edited the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher (1844). In the only volume
that appeared Marx’s essays “Zur Judenfrage” and “Einleitung Zur Kritik der Hegel’schen Rechts-
Philosophie” were published, which were seminal for Marx’s shift towards social revolution.
 77

as isolated from the political and social whole.37 Therefore, Ruge dialectically ar-
gues that a simultaneously materialist and idealist process of gaining awareness is
vital for the proletariat to gain a socio-revolutionary consciousness. Social misery
(“Noth”) will create social understanding, while political sense, in turn, will help
to discover the roots of social misery. Without such political consciousness and
awareness of social principles as its guiding forces, proletarian social revolution, for
Ruge, remains impossible.
Marx juxtaposes Ruge’s scenario that political sense and social principles will act
as the catalyst of a potential social revolution with the notion of a social sense and
social consciousness functioning as such. He replaces Ruge’s insights into abstract
social principles with concrete proletarian consciousness. Marx contends that social
revolution can never be triggered by political consciousness that, for Ruge, seems
to arise as much out of material circumstances, “Noth”, as it seems imposed on
the proletarians by the politically progressive part of the German bourgeoisie (“der
politische Verstand der Deutschen). By contrast, for Marx it has to be triggered
by proletarian social consciousness that has been authentically and independently
acquired through the experience of the material circumstances.
Additionally, he dismisses Ruge’s argument as both ideologically and logically
flawed as it fails to properly distinguish between the political and the social. To
speak of a social revolution that has political theory at its heart is a contradiction
in terms. In case Ruge, with his oracular remarks, means a political revolution
that has social repercussion, then his entire terminological balancing act amounts
to nothing more than a relabelling of the old concept of political revolution that
always implies a certain element of social change.

Eine “sociale” Revolution mit einer politischen Seele ist entweder ein zusam-
mengesetzter Unsinn, wenn der “Preuße” unter “socialer” Revolution eine
“sociale” Revolution im Gegensatz zu einer politischen versteht, und nichts
desto weniger der socialen Revolution statt einer socialen eine politische
Seele verleiht. Oder eine “sociale Revolution mit einer politischen Seele” ist
nichts als eine Paraphrase von dem, was man sonst eine “politische Revoluti-
on” oder eine “Revolution schlechthin” nannte. Jede Revolution lös’t die alte

37 Lacking a specifying attribute, such as ‘politisch’ or ‘social,’ it is not clear whether “Gemein-
wesen” here refers to the state or the social system. Noting this ambiguity, Marx decides that
by “Gemeinwesen ist hier das politische Gemeinwesen, das Staatswesen zu verstehn” (MEGA II,
462; Marx’s emphasis). In my opinion, however, the ambiguous reference of this term cannot be
reduced that easily. As Marx himself points out earlier in the essay, the ideological delusion of
republicanism consists exactly in the failure to distinguish between state and society.
78
Gesellschaft auf; insofern ist sie social. Jede Revolution stürzt die alte Gewalt;
insofern ist sie politisch. (MEGA II, 463; Marx’s emphasis)

Marx implies that the contemporary social revolution requires a fundamental so-
cioeconomic change, a shift from a capitalist exploitative to a communist liberated
system of production. This places it in contrast to political revolution, which (if
it deserves the term ‘revolution’ at all) always involves a certain degree of societal
change. To take a contemporary example, the French July Revolution of 1830 did
not fundamentally change the economic system, since both before and after the
revolution the socioeconomic system in France remained capitalist. It did however
change French society as it ‘enthroned’ the liberal bourgeoisie as both the economic
and political ruling class with the new de jure aristocratic ruler, the Duc d’Orléans,
alias Louis Philippe, being de facto little more than a straw man of the great bour-
geoisie. Most important, it did not emancipate the proletariat.

1.3.4 “Die Waffe der Kritik” against “die Kritik der Waffen”: The Dialectics of
Socio-Revolutionary Theory and Practice

The pivotal ideological turn that Marx undertakes in the “Randglossen” consists
in a decisive revision of his own earlier – residually idealist – thoughts on social
revolution. In the “Einleitung Zur Kritik der Hegel’schen Rechts-Philosophie” from
earlier in the same year (1844) he had still argued for dialectical top-down and
bottom-up movement to trigger the proletarian social revolution. As Stathis Kou-
velakis underlines, in the “Einleitung” “Marx encounters the proletariat at the the-
oretical and symbolic level” (2003, 330). This tendency is far less pronounced in
the “Randglossen.” In the “Einleitung” Marx argues that without universal eman-
cipation that includes the one of the proletariat (redressing its complete alienation)
any ‘social revolution’ will never be able to break the reoccurring configurations
of class exploitation that have characterised human history until the present day.
Social theory has to reach the masses, after which practical socio-revolutionary ac-
tion will be taken by society’s outcast, the proletariat. Not altogether dissimilar to
Ruge, who argues for the development of a political sense to discover “die Wurzel
der geselligen Noth,” Marx in the “Einleitung” calls for the establishment of a radi-
cally sceptical philosophy. Unlike socially impotent idealist philosophy, however,
such radical social theory has the power to effect material change, since it will grip
 79

the masses. These will then, in turn, materially overthrow first the political and
then the existing socioeconomic order.

Die Waffe der Kritik kann allerdings die Kritik der Waffen nicht ersetzen,
die materielle Gewalt muß gestürzt werden durch materielle Gewalt, allein
auch die Theorie wird zur materiellen Gewalt, sobald sie die Massen er-
greift. Die Theorie ist fähig, die Massen zu ergreifen, sobald sie ad hominem
demonstrirt, und sie demonstrirt ad hominem, sobald sie radikal wird. Ra-
dikal sein ist die Sache an der Wurzel fassen. Die Wurzel für den Menschen
ist aber der Mensch selbst. Der evidente Beweis für den Radikalismus der
deutschen Theorie, also für ihre praktische Energie ist ihr Ausgang von der
entschiedenen positiven Aufhebung der Religion. Die Kritik der Religion
endet mit der Lehre, daß der Mensch das höchste Wesen für den Menschen
sei, also mit dem categorischen Imperativ, alle Verhältnisse umzuwerfen, in
denen der Mensch ein erniedrigtes, ein geknechtetes, ein verlassenes, ein
verächtliches Wesen ist, Verhältnisse, die man nicht besser schildern kann,
als durch den Ausruf eines Franzosen bei einer projektierten Hundesteuer:
Arme Hunde! Man will euch wie Menschen behandeln! (MEGA II, 177;
Marx’s emphasis)

As the positive sublation of religion, radical theory posits that humans must no
longer worship a higher being but instead cherish their fellow human beings as
the highest beings. In reality, however they treat them worse than animals: even
taxation functions solely as a means of exploiting the poor and safeguarding the so-
cioeconomic status quo, as Marx underlines through the sarcastic comment on the
projected dog tax in France. Since oppression and exploitation are a gross violation
of ‘divine’ human nature and human rights, it follows that the material circum-
stances have to be overthrown that make the dehumanisation of humans possible.
In a revolutionary appropriation of Kant’s ‘categorical imperative’ Marx contends
that the abuses committed against fellow human beings place the onus on human-
ity to end them by conducting a social revolution. Revolutionary theory must lead
to revolutionary practice; otherwise it bears the same perverted relation to social
reality as idealist philosophy. In order for this new type of radical social philosophy
to instigate a successful proletarian social revolution it further has to address the
social needs of the masses: “Die Theorie wird in einem Volke immer nur so weit
verwirklicht, als sie die Verwirklichung seiner Bedürfnisse ist” (MEGA II, 178).
Even considering this ‘materialist’ caveat, Marx’s argument for a social revolu-
tion still follows an idealistic logic. However, Marx introduces a further materialist
dimension when he posits that even developing a radical, revolutionary philosophy
80

that articulates the needs of masses is not yet sufficient. At the same time, the mate-
rial circumstances must be so oppressive, as to generate a corresponding socio-rev-
olutionary consciousness. These elements together may then trigger social revolu-
tion. While Marx insists on the social character of both theory and consciousness,
Marx’s argument in this essay does not seem that far removed from Ruge’s assertion
that “Noth” generates “Verstand.” In contrast to Ruge, however, Marx even in this
more ‘idealistic’ conception of social revolution insists on a dialectics between revo-
lutionary theory and practice, between ideology and the material base. As Marx
insists in one of his trademark chiastic inversions in the “Einleitung Zur Kritik
der Hegel’schen Rechts-Philosophie,” both material reality and corresponding theory
have to work in unison in order for social revolution to materialise: “Es genügt
nicht, daß der Gedanke zur Verwirklichung drängt, die Wirklichkeit muß sich
selbst zum Gedanken drängen“ (MEGA II, 178).38
Yet Marx at the end of this essay leaves little doubt that he assigns the intellec-
tual guiding role in the future social revolution to (German) radical social philoso-
phy. The combination of philosophical thoroughness and decisive revolutionary
action by the proletariat will lead to universal emancipation. In this revolution the
proletariat functions as both its emotionally and physically active driving force,
while radical philosophy constitutes the intellectual driving force, Marx declares
in a passage laced with dialectical chiastic constructions, inversions, antitheses and
other rhetorical devices:

Die einzig praktisch mögliche Befreiung Deutschlands ist die Befreiung auf
dem Standpunkt der Theorie, welche den Menschen für das höchste Wesen
38 If one trusts the statements given by the ‘Landboten’-conspirators, Büchner had voiced similar
insights about a decade earlier. He recognised the fundamental importance that any social revo-
lutionary theory must closely correspond to the material realities of the masses. According to
August Becker, Büchner contended that only pamphlets that concretely address the “materiell[e]
Noth” of the peasants instead of propagating abstract political and social terms and concepts
such a “Ehre und Freiheit”, “Recht[e] der Menschen” stand any chance of instigating a success-
ful social revolution. At the same time, the material circumstances must be also be pressing in
order for socio-revolutionary theory to have any impact: “Sollte es den Fürsten einfallen, den
materiellen Zustand des Volkes zu verbessern, […] dann ist die Sache der Revolution, wenn sich
der Himmel nicht erbarmt, in Deutschland auf immer verloren (Büchner 2002 II, 659-660;
emphasis in original). Similar arguments (albeit phrased in a considerably more metaphorical,
revolutionary-religious language) can also be found in Büchner’s letter to Gutzkow (written after
19 March 1835): “das Verhältnis zwischen Armen und Reichen ist das einzige revolutionäre
Element in der Welt, der Hunger allein kann die Freiheitsgöttin und nur ein Moses, der uns die
sieben ägyptischen Plagen auf den Hals schickte, könnte ein Messias werden. Mästen Sie die
Bauern und die Revolution bekommt die Apoplexie. Ein Huhn im Topf jedes Bauern macht den
gallischen Hahn verenden” (2002 II, 400; Büchner’s emphasis).
 81
des Menschen erklärt. […] In Deutschland kann keine Art von Knecht-
schaft gebrochen werden, ohne jede Art der Knechtschaft zu brechen. Das
gründliche Deutschland kann nicht revolutioniren, ohne von Grund aus zu
revolutioniren. Die Emancipation des Deutschen ist die Emancipation des
Menschen. Der Kopf dieser Emancipation ist die Philosophie, ihr Herz das
Proletariat. Die Philosophie kann sich nicht verwirklichen ohne die Auf-
hebung des Proletariats, das Proletariat kann sich nicht aufheben ohne die
Verwirklichung der Philosophie. (MEGA II, 183: Marx’s emphasis)

Marx here pictures a dialectical exchange and a mutual dependency between the
head (philosophy) and the heart (the proletariat) of the social revolution that will
lead to the mutual sublation of both. Yet, in spite of the reciprocal process, there
nevertheless seems to exist a hierarchical relationship between the two. This seems
to play out in favour of philosophy, since it is cast as the instigator and the prole-
tariat as the agent of social change. Without the proletariat there can be no socio-
revolutionary action, but without a socially conscious proletariat that has imbibed
radical philosophy, a social revolution will not materialise. One may, indeed, ac-
cuse Marx here of blatant bourgeois intellectual arrogance as he denies the pro-
letariat the ability of gaining on its own – without lessons of social theory given
by bourgeois philosophers – an independent and authentic consciousness of its
social condition.39 By contrast, Stathis Kouvelakis argues that the proletariat here
“remains not a ‘passive’ one,” since it is by its activity that radical philosophy has
been transformed into revolutionary “‘theory’ [Theorie],” from “a detached form of
social activity” into “critical practice, a material force that grips the masses; and it
designates the theoretical moment of revolutionary practice” (2003, 332; my em-
phasis). As pivotal as this transformation of philosophy into revolutionary theory
is, the implied passive voice – “a material force that grips the masses” – in Kouve-
lakis’ paraphrase still betrays a certain passivity of the proletariat in Marx’s concep-
tion of radical revolution. Significantly, Marx and Engels in Die deutsche Ideologie
invert the idealist notion that theory and philosophical critique could ever be a
driving force of the revolution, claiming instead from materialist angle, “daß nicht
die Kritik, sondern die Revolution die treibende Kraft der Geschichte auch der Re-
ligion, Philosophie und sonstigen Theorie ist” (MEW III, 38). As I will contend,
it is already in the “Randglossen” that Marx begins to revise his earlier residually
idealist position and move towards a conception of the proletariat that is regarded
as independently capable of acquiring a revolutionary social consciousness and

39 For a more detailed treatment of Marx’s ideology of social revolution in the “Einleitung Zur
Kritik der Hegel’schen Rechts-Philosophie” and a comparison to Heine’s manifesto of sensual lib-
eration in Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland (1834), see Chapter 3.2.2.
82

initiating socio-revolutionary action. As Michael Löwy affirms, this article, whose

importance “has, in general, been singularly underestimated by the ‘Marxologists,’
[…] opened, so to speak, a new phase in the movement of Marx’s thought, the
phase in which his theory of the revolutionary self-emancipation of the proletariat
took shape” (2003, 91).

1.3.5 “Eine Protestation des Menschen gegen das entmenschte Leben”: Marx’s
Conception of Proletarian Social Revolution as a Struggle against Aliena-
tion

This socially patronising (and residually idealist) stance on proletarian social revo-
lution is largely absent from the “Randglossen.” In criticising Ruge, Marx also
undertakes a tacit self-critique of his earlier views on proletarian social revolu-
tion. Instead of social theory and radical philosophy as the guiding forces of social
revolution, Marx now regards concrete proletarian social consciousness and ac-
tion as its basis. In their socio-revolutionary actions, the proletarians create both
social theory and consciousness. Explicitly stressing the attributives “theoretical”
and “conscious,” Marx maintains that the Silesian Weaver’s Revolt had a more pro-
nounced “theoretischen und bewußten Charakter” than all previous workers’ revolt.
As he insists, the weavers had acquired – independently – a “Bewußtsein über das
Wesen des Proletariats” (cf. MEGA II, 459; Marx’s emphasis).
Unlike in the “Einleitung”, in the “Randglossen” Marx casts the proletariat
and its actions, which stem from an independently acquired consciousness of its
social condition, as the sole agents of social revolution; an assertion that is deeply
entrenched in his holistic view of this concept. This anti-mechanistic perspective
(which one might call socialist-humanist) does not stop with the potential means
with which to effect socio-revolutionary change.40 It also guides the ultimate goal
that social revolution ought to achieve: ‘universal emancipation.’ The crucial dis-
tinction that Marx draws between political and social revolution is not just that the
one changes the system of government and the other the socioeconomic system.

40 Frank Ruda has recently argued that Marx was neither ‘anti-humanist’ nor ‘post-humanist’, but
instead altered ‘humanism,’ liberating it from its liberal-bourgeois limitations. Drawing upon
Alain Badiou’s readings of Marx, he aims “to transform the picture of the early humanist Marx,”
by showing that Marx himself “transformed what has been called humanism” (2009, 176).
While Ruda focuses on the early Marx, he suggests that this novel form of ‘humanism’ is still
traceable in the mature Marx, thus countering Althusser’s influential thesis of a fundamental
‘epistemological break’ between the early and the later Marx.
 83

Social revolution for Marx is a ‘deep revolution’ as it means not only a fundamen-
tal change in the means of production and class structure but also a fundamental
change in the human condition: the reversal of alienation which the proletarian
exploitation and its isolation from society epitomises. The proletariat is doubly
alienated, from the products of its labour and its social self: its human essence.
While such alienation is generated by the socioeconomic conditions of produc-
tion under capitalism, Marx understands alienation in a much broader sense than
merely socioeconomic. For Marx – as well as for other contemporary radical social
critics – proletarian alienation arises out of the following contradictions: The capi-
talist mode of production leads to the accumulation of immense profits, property,
and capital in the hands of the capitalists who do not play a productive part in this
process while the property-less proletarian producers are denied ownership of their
products. As a consequence, the workers become increasingly more destitute, alien-
ated from their labour, the products of their labour, and from themselves. As Marx
points out in an unpublished text (dating from the same year as the “Randglos-
sen”), in the first notebook of his Ökonomisch-Philosophische Manuscripte (1844),
the contradictions of the capitalist method of production not only lead to the
proletariat’s alienation from the product of its labour but also from its social/hu-
man self from which it is separated because of continuous socioeconomic violence.
As the product of the worker’s labour (its reified labour) is no longer his own, so is
he no longer the owner of his self. As the capitalist owns the worker’s products, so
does he ‘own’ him, too. Instead of being a human individual in full possession of
humanity, the worker is gradually reified and dehumanised until he becomes little
more than an object, a tool in the vast machinery of industrial capitalism:

Der Gegenstand, den die Arbeit producirt, ihr Product, tritt ihr als ein frem-
des Wesen, als eine von d[em] Producenten unabhängige Macht gegenüber.
Das Product der Arbeit ist die Arbeit, die sich in einem Gegenstand fixirt,
sachlich gemacht hat, es die Vergegenständlichung der Arbeit. Die Verwirkli-
chung der Arbeit ist ihre Vergegenständlichung. Diese Verwirklichung der
Arbeit erscheint in dem nationalökonomischen Zustand als Entwirklichung
des Arbeiters, die Vergegenständlichung als als Verlust des Gegenstandes und
Knechtschaft unter dem Gegenstand, die Aneignung als Entfremdung, als Ent-
äusserung. Die Verwirklichung der Arbeit erscheint so sehr als Entwirkli-
chung, daß der Arbeiter bis zum Hungertod entwirklicht wird. […] Die
Aneignung des Gegenstandes erscheint um so sehr als Entfremdung, daß je
mehr Gegenstände der Arbeiter producirt, er um so weniger besitzen kann
und um so mehr unter die Herrschaft seines Products, des Capitals, geräth.
In der Bestimmung, daß der Arbeiter zum Product seiner Arbeit als einem
84
fremden Gegenstand sich verhält, liegen alle diese Consequenzen. Denn es
ist nach dieser Voraussetzung klar: Je mehr der Arbeiter sich ausarbeitet, um
so mächtiger wird die fremde, gegenständliche Welt, die er sich gegenüber
schafft, um so ärmer wird er selbst, seine innre Welt, um so weniger gehört
ihm zu eigen. (MEGA II, 364-365; Marx’s emphasis)41

The mode of production conditions human relationships. In the case of one built
upon exploitation, it corrupts, corrodes, poisons and ultimately destroys the hu-
manity of those involved in the labour process. Thus it is not sufficient to merely
develop an awareness of the social consequences of the mode of production, but
furthermore fundamentally change it. Since the irreconcilable contradictions aris-
ing from the alienation of labour in the capitalist process of production go hand in
hand with proletarian self-alienation, this development can only be reversed by a
social revolution that is also enacted by the proletariat itself. Only the proletariat,
as the class that is most severely affected by this socio-psychological malaise, can
heal this split in the social self.
Social revolution, for Marx, is thus not merely a socioeconomic revolution but,
in essence, an anthropological revolution that fundamentally changes the human
condition. To turn this idea of double alienation of the proletariat into the corner-
stone within the concept of social revolution marks one of Marx’s major theoretical
achievements. While the goal of social revolution consists in ultimately reversing
all human alienation that affects all classes of society, this can only be achieved by
proletarian social revolution. At least in the early Marx, his insistence on the vital
need for social revolution is driven more by socio-philosophical than by socioeco-
nomic consideration. Pivotally, he considers social alienation as considerably more
profound, more severe, and more unbearable than political isolation could ever be.
Consequently, the alienation from the human and social “Gemeinwesen” has to be
sharply distinguished from the one stemming from the “politische Gemeinwesen,
das Staatswesen” (cf. MEGA II, 462). The degree of absolute social alienation that
the future proletarian social revolution aims to reverse distinguishes it from the
41 Compare further the following earlier, parallel passage in the same notebook. Also indicting
this fundamental contradiction of capitalism that the more the worker produces, the poorer
he relatively becomes, Marx stresses even more strongly that the worker literally turns into the
capitalist’s “good”, a status not dissimilar to the one of the chattel slave: “Der Arbeiter wird um
so ärmer, je mehr Reichtum er producirt, je mehr seine Production und Macht und Umfang
zunimmt. Der Arbeiter wird eine um so wohlfeilere Waare, je mehr Waaren er schafft. Mit der
Verwertung der Sachenwelt, nimmt die Entwerthung der Menschenwelt im direkten Verhältniß
zu. Die Arbeit producirt nicht nur Waaren; sie producirt sich selbst und d[en] Arbeiter als eine
Waare und zwar in dem Verhältniß, in welchem sie überhaupt Waaren producirt” (MEGA II,
235; Marx’s emphasis).
 85

goals of the French Revolution: the most significant political revolution in history.42
The revolutionaries of 1789 strived to end the political isolation of the bourgeoisie,
“die heilose Isolirung der Bürger vom Gemeinwesen,” only to establish a new so-
cially oppressive system (cf. MEGA II, 462). This is the necessary consequence of
any revolution that strives to end the political separation of one class from the state
and government without reversing, at the same time, its alienation. Contrasting
the reality of the highly alienated and socially exclusive bourgeois society with the
implied ideal of a communist utopia (of a socially inclusive society), Marx explains
through this juxtaposition the insufficiency of the concept of a mere political revo-
lution. On the one hand, Marx identifies the political separation of the oppressed
classes from civic rights, the state, and the political entirety (“politische Gemein-
wesen”). On the other hand he recognises the proletariat’s alienation from human
rights, a human life, and the social entirety that he regards as a much more severe
crime against humanity than its political marginalisation:

Das Gemeinwesen aber, von welchem der Arbeiter isolirt ist, ist ein Gemein-
wesen von ganz andrer Realität und ganz andrem Umfang als das politische
Gemeinwesen. Dies Gemeinwesen, von welchem ihn seine eigene Arbeit
trennt, ist das Leben selbst, das physische und geistige Leben, die mensch-
liche Sittlichkeit, die menschliche Tätigkeit, der menschliche Genuß, das
menschliche Wesen. Das menschliche Wesen ist das wahre Gemeinwesen der
Menschen. Wie die heillose Isolirung von diesem Wesen unverhältnismä-
ßig allseitiger, unerträglicher, fürchterlicher, widerspruchsvoller ist als die
Isolierung vom politischen Gemeinwesen, so ist auch die Aufhebung dieser
Isolirung und selbst eine partielle Reaktion, ein Aufstand gegen dieselbe um
so viel unendlicher, wie der Mensch unendlicher ist als der Staatsbürger, und
das menschliche Leben als das politische Leben. Der industrielle Aufstand mag
daher noch so partiell sein, er verschließt in sich eine universelle Seele: der
politische Aufstand mag noch so universell sein, er verbirgt unter der colos-
salsten Form einen engherzigen Geist. (MEGA II, 462; Marx’s emphasis)

Marx sees that a socially exclusive aspect hides beneath any political revolt. By con-
trast, every localised proletarian revolt harbours a universal, socially inclusive as-
pect. The Silesian Weavers’ Revolt of 1844 was characterised by a profound socio-

42 Later, in his writings on the 1848/49 revolutions, Marx will partially revise this view of the
French Revolution as a primarily political revolution. In particular in the article series “Die
Bourgeoisie und die Kontrerevolution” and Der achtzehnte Brumaire des Louis Bonaparte he
regards the French Revolution as the most profound bourgeois social revolution in history. While
it radically changed the socioeconomic structures, it failed, however, to instigate a society that
would be free from alienation and exploitation (see Chapter 4.2).
86

revolutionary dimension. This is not so much because it puts forward theoretical

demands for a change in the industrial relations and socioeconomic conditions of
production, but rather because it expresses a fundamental protest against human
alienation and social exclusion. By identifying such a universal and social character
in the Weaver’s Revolt, Marx counters Ruge’s allegation that the German lower
classes possess only a limited political vision of their condition. As Ruge claims,
they look no further than “ihren Heerd, ihre Fabrik, ihren Distrikt” (1844, 4). For
Marx, on the other hand, the Silesian Weaver’s Revolt constitutes a social revolu-
tion en miniature, since it contains the kernel of wider proletarian social revolution
with its final aim to overcome human alienation altogether.

Eine sociale Revolution befindet sich deßwegen auf dem Standpunkt des
Ganzen, weil sie – fände sie auch nur in einem Fabrikdistrikt statt – weil
sie eine Protestation des Menschen gegen das entmenschte Leben ist, weil
sie vom Standpunkt des einzelnen wirklichen Individuums ausgeht, weil das
Gemeinwesen, gegen dessen Trennung von sich das Individuum reagirt, das
wahre Gemeinwesen des Menschen ist, das menschliche Wesen. (MEGA II,
462; Marx’s emphasis)

Marx insists in both the “Randglossen” and the “Einleitung” that an exclusively
political revolution is a socially repressive concept. With dismissing the concept of
a merely political revolution, he simultaneously discards the notion that the con-
temporary bourgeoisie could ever strive towards a genuine social revolution.
The rationale of those who claim that the bourgeoisie will liberate the entire so-
cietal system is that a portion of society that is excluded from political rule will un-
dertake the political revolution. This political revolution will then emancipate the
whole of society. In “der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft,” however, no group is capable of
achieving this task. Marx here plays with the ambiguity of this term meaning both
‘civil’ and ‘bourgeois’ society. While a mere political revolution is only capable of
illusionary change, a deeply social, “radical,” revolution that aims to emancipate
all of humanity from its fetters will achieve a genuine transformation. A merely
political revolution could solely lead to universal emancipation if there was a level
playing ground rather than the existent deep socioeconomic inequalities and deep
divisions between classes. Revolutionary political change is not illusory, but the
notion that this alone could lead to social liberation and equality is:

Nicht die radicale Revolution ist ein utopischer Traum für Deutschland,
nicht die allgemein menschliche Emancipation, sondern vielmehr die theil-
weise, die nur politische Revolution, die Revolution, welche die Pfeiler des
 87
Hauses stehen läßt. Worauf beruht eine theilweise, eine nur politische Re-
volution? Darauf, daß ein Theil der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft sich emancipirt
und zur allgemeinen Herrschaft gelangt, darauf, daß eine bestimmte Klasse
von ihrer besondern Situation aus die allgemeine Emancipation der Gesell-
schaft unternimmt. Diese Klasse befreit die ganze Gesellschaft, aber nur un-
ter der Voraussetzung, daß die ganze Gesellschaft sich in der Situation dieser
Klasse befindet, also z.B. Geld und Bildung besitzt oder beliebig erwerben
kann. (MEGA II, 179; Marx’s emphasis)

Denying to any class of bourgeois society the role of the social emancipator, Marx
asserts that only the proletariat is able to eventually create a socially equal society.
Fully excluded from bourgeois society, it experiences its contradictions first hand.
For Marx, it is precisely this role of the proletariat as society’s pariah that makes it
alone capable of overcoming its contradictions and achieving universal emancipa-
tion, of becoming society’s “Emancipator”:

[...] einer Klasse mit radikalen Ketten, einer Klasse der bürgerlichen Gesell-
schaft, welche keine Klasse der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft ist, eines Standes,
welcher die Auflösung aller Stände ist, einer Sphäre, welche einen univer-
sellen Charakter durch ihre universellen Leiden besitzt und kein besondres
Recht in Anspruch nimmt, weil kein besondres Unrecht, sondern das Unrecht
schlechthin an ihr verübt wird, welche nicht mehr auf einen historischen,
sondern nur noch auf den menschlichen Titel provocieren kann, [...] einer
Sphäre endlich, welche sich nicht emancipieren kann, ohne sich von allen
übrigen Sphären der Gesellschaft und damit alle übrigen Sphären der Ge-
sellschaft zu emancipieren, welche mit einem Wort der völlige Verlust des
Menschen ist, also nur durch die völlige Wiedergewinnung des Menschen sich
selbst gewinnen kann. Diese Auflösung der Gesellschaft als ein besonderer
Stand ist das Proletariat. (MEGA II, 181-182; Marx’s emphasis)

To embrace the proletariat as the protagonist of the social revolution and the re-
deemer of humankind as wholeheartedly as Marx does here is no small feat for a
quintessentially bourgeois intellectual like him. His vision, however, does not lack
a certain social romanticism; in his conception, society’s outcast becomes its libera-
tor. This juxtaposition of the stereotypical view of the proletariat with Marx’s ro-
mantic vision of a heroic rise of the proletariat reverses the role of the proletariat in
the revolutionary drama from that of an extra to that of its protagonist. Unlike the
ideologically deluded bourgeois “Heroen der französischen Revolution,” Marx’s
proletarian heroes are highly conscious that the social ills, “socialen Mängel,” and
not the shortcomings of the political system, “politisch[e] Übelstände,” form the
88

source of human inequality, as he implies in the “Randglossen” (MEGA II, 457).

Social injustice and socioeconomic violence manifest themselves in the absolute
property-less status of the proletariat under bourgeois capitalism so starkly that any
claim to a right of private property becomes farcical:

Wenn das Proletariat die Auflösung der bisherigen Weltordnung verkündet, so

spricht es nur das Geheimniß seines eignen Daseins aus, denn es ist die fak-
tische Auflösung dieser Weltordnung. Wenn das Proletariat die Negation des
Privateigenthums verlangt, so erhebt es nur zum Prinzip der Gesellschaft, was
die Gesellschaft zu seinem Princip erhoben hat, was in ihm als negatives Re-
sultat der Gesellschaft schon ohne sein Zuthun verkörpert ist. (MEGA II,
182; Marx’s emphasis)

In a sarcastic-satiric vein, Marx here pointedly claims that it is not the ‘evil’ social-
ists that negate the right to private property but the capitalists. As he asserts, it is
blatantly ironic that a socioeconomic order that is centred on the right to private
property should deny this very right to the vast majority. It is in the condition of
the proletariat that the socio-psychologically pathology of capitalist society most
tangibly manifests itself. Consequently, Marx argues further that precisely the abo-
lition of private property has to form the concrete socioeconomic goal of radical
social revolution since the fetishisation of property conditions the dehumanised
and property-less status of the proletariat under bourgeois capitalism.

1.3.6 Proletarian Social Revolution: A Spectre of Anarchy or Vision of Univer-

sal Emancipation?

While the attack on private property forms the hallmark of radical socialism and
the bugbear of its bourgeois enemies, Marx’s critique of private property here
seems particularly pertinent for this study. Very succinctly, he expresses an insight
that is decisive for whether the radical writers of this study undertake a socio-rev-
olutionary turn. This schizophrenic paradox that a societal system that is built on
the apotheosis of private property denies to the majority of the human beings any
right of property was also very keenly felt by several of the writers that I include in
the study. To varying degrees these writers were conscious that the dehumanisation
of the proletariat marred the entire contemporary social system. Some authors (e.g.
Büchner and Weerth) drew the radical conclusion that proletarian social revolu-
tion with a redistribution of property was vital. By contrast, others (e.g. Shelley
and Heine) shied away from wholeheartedly endorsing social revolution since they
 89

feared that reversing the social system might lead to the destruction of the entire
existing social order and thus to an even worse social anarchy than under the status
quo. This paradox will be of key importance for the conflicting attitude that writers
such as Shelley (chapter 2), Börne, and Heine (chapter 3) have towards proletarian
social revolution. While all three are aware of the alienation and dehumanisation
of the proletariat, they, at the same time, fear the spectre of anarchy that might
be unleashed by the liberation of the proletariat from its fetters. The proletarian
attacks on property do not merely threaten the existence of the – numerically
few – rich, but the lifeblood of bourgeois society that they all inhabit. By contrast,
the dehumanisation of the property-less proletariat, its relegation to the slave-like
status of bourgeois property and of a means of production, can be seen as a decisive
factor for why Büchner – even though being part of the bourgeoisie – embraces a
scenario of proletarian social revolution and distances himself from Heine’s con-
cept of social revolution without the proletariat (see chapter 3.2.1). As Büchner’s
case illustrates, such a position, however, necessarily must endorse the destruction
of the existing societal order and renounce the scenario of its reformation. Embrac-
ing the prospect of such radical change, Büchner maintains that one has to let “die
abgelebte moderne Gesellschaft” go to the devil, since “aus[zu]sterben […] ist das
einzig Neue, was sie noch erleben kann” (Büchner 2002 II, 440).
While Büchner calls for the extinction of contemporary society, since he regards
it as beyond reform, others feared its destruction. Heine, for instance, warns in an
article from 17 September 1842 (collected in the Lutetia) that the early socialist
attacks on private property will lead, “wo nicht zu Gütergemeinschaft, doch gewiß
zur Erschütterung der bisherigen Eigentumsidee, des Grundpfeilers der heutigen
Gesellschaft.” As Heine paradigmatically admonishes, this will eventually result
in a horrific social revolution: “eine soziale Umwälzung, wogegen die französische
Revolution als sehr zahm und bescheiden erscheinen dürfte” (Heine 1997 V, 421-
422). While Heine is opposed to proletarian social revolution, as it would shatter
the idea of private property, “des Grundpfeilers der heutigen Gesellschaft,” Marx is
opposed to a purely political revolution that shies away from challenging property
ownership. Using the same metaphor as Heine, Marx asserts that this revolution
would, by necessity, be a haphazard “Revolution, welche die Pfeiler des Hauses ste-
hen läßt” (MEGA II, 179), since it would leave the mechanism of socioeconomic
oppression intact as he expresses it in “Einleitung Zur Kritik der Hegel’schen Rechts-
Philosophie.” In Das Manifest der kommunistischen Parties (1848) he is even con-
vinced that the impending European political revolution will be but the prelude to
the ensuing proletarian social revolution, the “bürgerliche Revolution also nur das
unmittelbare Vorspiel einer proletarischen Revolution sein kann” (MEW IV, 493).
90

Ironically though, Marx’s conviction (which he shared with other contemporary

socialists) that the political revolution will be followed by social revolution was
severely challenged by the course of the European revolutions of 1848/49 when
the political overthrow of the old forces (which was achieved largely by the fight-
ing power of the proletariat) was not followed by a successful social revolution.
Worse still, the only major attempt at proletarian social revolution in Paris in June
1848 was devastatingly quashed. As Marx insists retrospectively in Der achtzehnte
Brumaire (1852), using the imagery of drama: “Mit dieser Niederlage tritt das Pro-
letariat in den Hintergrund der revolutionären Bühne” (MEGA XI, 105; Marx’s
emphasis). This defeat caused a major disenchantment not only among German
Marxists but also among most European socialists. I would go so far as to suggest
that, from a socialist revolutionary perspective, the June Insurrection constitutes
the only truly tragic moment in the whole course of the revolutionary drama of
1848/49. The rest of the 1848/49 revolutions – to use Marx’s famous phrase from
the opening of the Brumaire – constituted little more than a “lumpige Tragödie,”
which parodied the “große Tragödie” of the French Revolution (cf. MEGA XI,
96). As I will argue in the fourth chapter, this imagery of drama that Marx (as well
as Weerth) uses to describe both revolutionary events and revolutionary theory is a
seminal feature of many Marxist revolutionary concepts. Its importance stretches
far beyond being a simple reiteration of the trope of revolution as drama. In ad-
dition, this ‘poetics of revolution,’ as I will call it, forms a vital part of the Marxist
thinking that surrounds political and social revolution. In this final chapter of my
study I will argue that the major disillusionment of 1848/49 – the absence of a
successful social revolution – not only manifested itself in a major rethinking of
Marxist revolutionary ideology but also in a corresponding revision of the poet-
ics of revolution. An optimistic model of revolution had been dominant before
1848. The revolutionary tragedy was thought to experience its transformation into
a ‘comic’ drama with the relatively swift realisation of a communist utopia to fol-
low a successful social revolution. However, as the revolutionary events of 1848/49
increasingly discredited such an optimistic scenario, the poetics of revolution took
a much bleaker turn: The dialectics of tragedy and farce began to replace the earlier
thesis and antithesis of tragedy and comedy and the optimistic, utopian ending of
the social drama; the advent of a classless and truly liberated society was postponed
to an unspecified, distant future. I will start, however, with an analysis of how in
Britain in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, amidst a profound social and
economic crisis, the notion of a social revolution gains wider currency in the radi-
cal discourse for the first time.
2. Charting the Limits of Political Revolution: The Peterloo
Massacre (1819), Shelley and British Radical Discourse

2.1 Political, Social, and Moral Revolution: The Stakes in Shelley’s Dilemma

Shelley’s 1819 poems seem to underline the need for fundamental social change
and, even more radically, a transformation of the socioeconomic system. The poems
move decisively towards the notion of social revolution when they challenge the
classical republican paradigm that views socio-revolutionary and socioeconomic
change as the necessary and inevitable result of a purely political revolution. At the
same time, Shelley develops an alternative scenario of social revolution as ‘moral
revolution.’ Wary of advocating revolutionary violence (at least none emanating
from the lower classes), he proposes a moral education of the labouring classes in
this process of revolution. It is believed that this will enable them to revolt ‘peace-
fully’ against their physical and psychological enslavement at the hands of the up-
per classes. The clash of these different notions of revolution lead to ideological
conflicts that I aim to trace by aligning Shelley’s texts with examples from the
contemporary radical discourse.
Both historians and critics of English literature (McMaster 1981, Chandler
1998, 11) have suggested possible similarities between England in 1819 and revo-
lutionary Europe in 1848, regarding the simmering socio-revolutionary tensions
as well as the socio-ideological conflict the literary authors faced. Although the
severe socioeconomic crisis in Britain after the Napoleonic Wars did not lead to
a revolution (unlike in continental Europe in 1848) the case has been made for
regarding the late 1810s in England as a period when socio-revolutionary tensions
ran extremely high. For instance, E. P. Thompson maintains that in 1819 in Brit-
ain “a revolution was possible” (1980, 737) and that “a radical interpretation” of
the Peterloo Massacre “would see it as a clear moment of class war” (1994, 185),
while Edward Royle emphasises that the news of the massacre caused genuine
revolutionary “[f ]ear and anger” throughout the country.1 These feelings “coming
1 On 16 August 1819 a mass meeting took place on Saint Peter’s Field in Manchester, the largest
in Britain for over twenty years. Between 30,000 and 100,000 people gathered to campaign for
electoral reform. Faced with such large numbers, the Manchester magistrates decided to have
92

on top of economic hardship and thwarted political demands, produced a revolu-

tionary cocktail” (2000, 53). In short, a situation with great socio-revolutionary
potential emerged, even though it must remain a matter of speculation which
percentage of the British lower-class population would have been willing to par-
ticipate in forceful action against the government to fight for their rights?2 What
all scholars agree on, however, is that Peterloo marked a caesura in British history.
Notably, Graham McMaster has argued in a socio-historical investigation of Sir
Walter Scott’s novels that in 1819 British society underwent a similar deep political
and social crisis as continental Europe did during the revolutions of 1848. Draw-
ing upon Georg Lukács’ assessment of 1848 in the latter’s study on the historical
novel, McMaster argues that the spectre of social revolution, class war, and anarchy
that Peterloo raised affected British bourgeois writers of all political persuasions
and their attitude towards further social and political change. Lukács maintains
that the socio-revolutionary confrontations of 1848 had a dramatic impact on
all fields of bourgeois ideology that also influenced decisively “das Schicksal von
Wissenschaft und Kunst” (cf. Lukács 1965 VI, 207-208). McMaster suggests that
a similar development took place in Britain in 1819, which presented bourgeois
writers with the following awkward choice: either to embrace further political and
social reform risking to intensify the class struggle (or even the outbreak of a prole-
tarian social revolution) or to defend the increasingly anachronistic socio-political
and socioeconomic status quo:

Lukacs was doubtless [sic] right to stress the importance of 1848 – in con-
tinental Europe and in the Austrian Empire particularly. In England, howe-
ver, the year had less significance, while others, which Lukacs ignores, were

the main speaker Henry Hunt arrested, since – as they argued later – “the whole bore the ap-
pearance of insurrection” (Quoted in Stevenson 1992, 284). Yeomanry on horseback moved in
to execute the order and, riding into the crowd, wounded several protesters with their sabres.
When the yeomanry arrested Hunt, they found themselves surrounded by the crowd. Hussars,
who were deployed to assist the yeomanry, hewed their way through the crowd. Panic set in and
a massacre ensued, which left at least eleven protesters dead and several hundred wounded. In
a sarcastic allusion to the British (and Prussian) triumph over Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815
(some of the hussars were even wearing their Waterloo medals), the left-wing press dubbed the
massacre of St. Peter’s Field, ‘Peterloo Massacre’ or just ‘Peterloo’ (See Gardner 2002, 35).
2 In his study of ultra-radicalism in London, a hotbed of contemporary radicalism, Ian McCal-
man recounts widespread arming, drilling and plotting among ultra-radical circles after Peterloo
(1989, 134-139). Nevertheless, he believes that the numbers of potential insurgents were rela-
tively low, endorsing the estimate of the radical preacher and social revolutionary Robert Wed-
derburn that the “London ultras could muster no more than 2000 men, not all of them armed”
(137).
 93
perhaps just as traumatic. 1848 was the year in which bourgeois writers had
to either recognise and accept the new epoch that was dawning, or else be
doomed to the role of apologists of a declining era. Scott, I believe, expe-
rienced a similar crisis in 1819, the year of Peterloo. The class struggle, or,
as Scott called it, the constitutional question, was of course the single most
important ‘event’ between 1815 and 1832 [the year of the passing of the
Reform Bill]; most of the individual political crises can be subsumed into it.
(McMaster 1981, 90)

In spite of these persuasive arguments put forward by McMaster and social histo-
rians to view 1819 in Britain as a time of deep social crisis and high socio-revolu-
tionary potential, Shelley’s attitude towards social revolution, as it emerges in his
1819 poems and his essay A Philosophical View on Reform (subsequently referred
to as PVR), has received little critical attention. This seems all the more surprising,
since Shelley not only explicitly addresses the contemporary socioeconomic crisis,
but also strongly engages with the spectre of proletarian social revolution that Pe-
terloo raised. The massacre and its political and social implications are the central
subject of his most famous poem from that year: The Mask of Anarchy; Written on
the Occasion of the Massacre in Manchester that engages with this atrocity, as its sub-
title prominently highlights. However, Michael Scrivener is the only scholar, to my
knowledge, who astutely recognises how the concept of social revolution is pivotal
for understanding the ideological contradictions within Shelley’s 1819 writings.
Referring specifically to The Mask of Anarchy (subsequently abbreviated as TMoA),
he argues that the poem’s dilemma centres on the questions of proletarian-plebeian
violence and social revolution.3 Highlighting Shelley’s profound “[a]mbivalence
3 In the following, the terms ‘proletarian,’ ‘proletariat,’ ‘lower class,’ ‘labouring classes,’ ‘working
classes,’ ‘labourer’ and ‘worker’ will be used as near synonyms. Except for proletarian and pro-
letariat, which only gained currency in the 1830s (see Conze 1984, 38-39), the contemporary
discourse uses these terms in close semantic proximity to each other. Even though the term
‘proletarian’ or ‘proletariat’ did not yet exist, the concept did, as William Cobbett’s definition
of the labouring classes proves. By the “labouring classes” he understands “those who have no
property in anything but their labour” (1998 VII, 494). As early as 1820, he highlights the
lack of property as the key characteristic of the proletariat. Significantly, it is in line with some
later socialist understandings of the term. Marx and Engels, for instance, in the Das Manifest
der Kommunistischen Partei (1848), define the proletariat as “eigentumslos” (MEW IV, 472).
Furthermore, Cobbett attributes the same strong socio-revolutionary potential to the proletariat
that the French and German socialists were later to associate with this class. Its state of abso-
lute destitution and lack of property explain for Cobbett the enormity of the threat it poses to
contemporary society. Since it “cannot fall much lower,” it also forms an extremely determined
socio-revolutionary force, endangering all “who have property at stake” (1998 VIII, 494). Ex-
cept for the key difference that Cobbett fears the proletarian revolution and Marx and Engels
eagerly anticipate it, all three recognise in the proletariat’s social status, as society’s pariah, the
94

[…] toward social revolution” (1982, 210), he concludes that the poem “has to be
recognized as contradictory, at war with itself, not entirely resolved” (199).
Other critics also emphasise the social implications of the poem’s contradictions,
in particular Shelley’s uneasiness about mass violence as a revolutionary means. For
instance, Susan Wolfson has provocatively argued that TMoA ultimately seems
more worried about lower-class violence than about the socio-political violence
of the monarchic state. Alluding to its title, she maintains that “[w]hat the poem’s
contradictions contain, in both senses, is a specter of anarchy – not in the Crown,
but in the Men of England” (1997, 202). While Wolfson raises a crucial point
about the poem, such a limited understanding of its semantics of anarchy, how-
ever, seems slightly simplistic. Besides the fact that – as Scrivener (1982) and more
recently Duffy (2005) have conclusively proven – Shelley was strongly influenced
in his political thinking by the philosophical anarchism of his father-in-law, Wil-
liam Godwin, there are further problems inherent in Wolfson’s verdict. While she
rightly recognises Shelley’s anxieties and ambivalence about lower-class violence,
she wrongly plays down his fundamental opposition to the ruling system in Brit-
ain. Shelley is so adamantly opposed to it precisely because he regards it as more
than just a politically oppressive system. In Shelley’s view, it constitutes one enor-
mous socioeconomic apparatus for the exploitation of the poor rather than being
merely a political system to oppress them. For Shelley, the monarchic order func-
tions only as a political façade maintained to justify the boundless exploitation of
the lower classes by the ruling classes. “Monarchy is only the string which ties the
robber’s bundle,” he insists in PVR. In a parliamentary monarchy such as Britain,
compared to an “absolute monarchy,” the “power of the rich” to exploit the poor
has even increased considerably, because in the latter the “name and the office of
king is merely a mask of this power.” Both function only as a “kind of stalking-
horse” for the rich to hide behind and to hide and legitimise their reckless capitalist
greed (1920, 38). This position resembles closely the stance of some contemporary
ultra-radicals. It even seems likely that Shelley here echoes the leading ultra-radical
ideologist Thomas Evans who in his pamphlet Christian Policy, the Salvation of the
Empire (1816) attacked the large landowners for using the monarchy as a smoke-
screen to veil their exploitative practices. As he asks in a rhetorical question, “[h]as
it not been you, the oligarchy, the land-monopolists, of these realms, that have
cause for its strong revolutionary motivation. Marx and Engels assert in the concluding lines of
their manifesto that the proletariat cannot sink any lower in its socioeconomic decline, and thus
has to realise its full socio-revolutionary potential if it is to liberate itself. Famously, they call
upon the members of this class to unite internationally and start a revolution, since they have
nothing to lose in it: “Die Proletarier haben nichts in ihr zu verlieren als ihre Ketten. Sie haben
eine Welt zu gewinnen” (MEW IV, 493).
 95

caused all the troubles, wars, and distraction in Europe and America, for these last
fifty years at least; while you have made the crown, the stalking horse, the scape-
goat?” (Quoted in McCalman 1988, 102) In extending the semantics of political
terms Shelley furthermore practices what – according to McCalman – characterises
the rhetoric of “plebeian radicals of the period”: the attempt “to give old language
new dimensions” (103).
The term “Mask” in TMoA’s title must also be understood in exactly this sense
as a smokescreen employed to hide and legitimatise oppressive and exploitative
practices. In PVR Shelley is referring to any class system that employs its political
ideology and oppressive institutions, its “superstructure of political and religious
tyranny” (1920, 8) both to enforce and to veil socioeconomic exploitation. This
tactic is used neither just by the Crown of England nor has it been merely prac-
ticed by all monarchic systems, but for Shelley it seems to have characterised most
systems of government throughout history. As he bitterly remarks in a fragmentary
sentence in a footnote to PVR, history has been a succession of “[r]egular and
graduated systems of alternate slavery and tyranny, by which all except the lowest
and the largest class were to be gainers in the materials of subsistence and ostenta-
tion at the expense of that class, the means being fraud and force” (1920, 8). Shel-
ley here seems to adopt a proto-Marxist view of human history that, up to then,
regards it as a succession of social systems geared towards the exploitation of the
lowest class of society.
In a similar way as with the term ‘monarchy,’ Shelley further shifts decisively
the common meaning of the key term in the poem’s title: “Anarchy.” It does not
primarily denote anarchy as “a state of lawlessness due to the absence or inefficien-
cy of the supreme power” (OED, under “anarchy”; sense 1a), but, on the contrary,
describes a state with myriads of laws that safeguard the exploitation of the lower
classes. As Shelley’s allegorical character Anarchy declares in an act of hubris, he
is “‘GOD, AND KING, AND LAW’“ (l. 37, Shelley 1935, 335).4 Shelley thus
poignantly unmasks how anarchy, in its figurative sense of “[n]on-recognition of
moral law” (OED, under ‘anarchy’; sense 2b), has governed most socio-political
and socioeconomic systems throughout history. Laws have been merely tools, ar-
bitrarily devised by the ruling classes to legalise boundless brutal oppression and
exploitation of the lower classes.5 This is a crucial dimension to the spectre of

4 Subsequently all quotations from Shelley’s poems will follow this edition.
5 Shelley’s understanding of anarchy as a system in which the ruling class devises amoral laws to
exploit the dominated class strongly anticipates Büchner’s views of social manipulation. In a
letter written to his family after the failed coup in Frankfurt (around 6 April 1833), Büchner
regards the “gesetzlichen Zustand” as a state of eternal upper-class terror committed against the
96

anarchy in the poem. It is evoked perhaps most forcefully in TMoA’s initial apoca-
lyptic vision of utter devastation and destruction that the monarch Anarchy and
his train wreak upon England and its lower-class inhabitants. Bertolt Brecht sums
up most pointedly this vital dimension to the depiction of Anarchy’s procession.
Emphasising Shelley’s social realism, which is artistically translated into ingenious
allegorical and symbolic images, Brecht comments on the semantic shift of ‘anar-
chy’ as follows:

So verfolgen wir den Zug der Anarchie auf London zu und sehen große
symbolische Bilder und wissen bei jeder Zeile, daß hier die Wirklichkeit zu
Wort kam. Hier wurde nicht nur der Mord bei seinem richtigen Namen
genannt, sondern, was sich und Ordnung nannte, wurde als Anarchie und
Verbrechen entlarvt. Und diese ‘symbolistische’ Schreibweise hinderte Shel-
ley keineswegs, sehr konkret zu werden. (Brecht 1969, 41)

For Brecht, Shelley’s ‘allegorical realism’ serves as a powerful means to expose the
realities of exploitation. However, unlike with Brecht, with Shelley such a con-
ception of anarchy as reckless socio-political oppression of the lower classes by
the upper classes does not translate into an unequivocal endorsement of forceful
social revolution. As some critics have pointed out, to fundamentally alter this
system of governance by amoral laws that legitimise an anarchic state of criminal
socioeconomic exploitation, Shelley puts forward an idealist concept of a non-
violent moral revolution. As Cian Duffy argues, “Shelley’s great revolutionary writ-
ing” – including PVR – “repeatedly insists that a systematic revolution in opinion,
a moral and intellectual revolution, must precede any successful or lasting change
in political institutions” (2005, 10; Duffy’s emphasis). While this way to trans-
form the political and essentially – one must add – also the socioeconomic sys-
tem constitutes the ideal manner of revolution endorsed by both PVR and TMoA,
the situation after the Peterloo Massacre increasingly questions the practicability
of such revolutionary action. Faced with the “unbending realities of actual life”

lower-class majority. The former degrade the latter even to the status of slaving animals: “Ein
Gesetz, das die große Masse der Staatsbürger zum fronenden Vieh macht, um die unnatürlichen
Bedürfnisse einer unbedeutenden und verdorbenen Minderzahl zu befriedigen.” Although – in
contrast to Shelley – he does not explicitly mention the term ‘anarchy,’ in contrast to Shelley, he
also regards the contemporary laws as a form of lawlessness. The contemporary socio-political
system is dominated by amoral anarchy: “eine ewige rohe, Gewalt, angetan dem Recht und der
gesunden Vernunft,” rather than by ethical considerations. However, in sharp contrast to Shel-
ley, he unequivocally advocates socio-revolutionary violence as the only means of changing the
status quo: “Meine Meinung ist die: Wenn in unserer Zeit etwas helfen soll, so ist es Gewalt”
(Büchner 2002 II, 366-367; Büchner’s emphasis).
 97

(Shelley 1920, 71), this theoretical solution is challenged by the socio-political

circumstances. Ironically, the spectre of civil war and anarchy that Shelley wanted
to avoid by his endorsement of non-violent moral change had already become a
reality through Peterloo. While “[t]wo years ago it might still have been possible
to have commenced a system of gradual reform” (Shelley 1920, 75), after the Mas-
sacre this option became entirely untenable as the past subjunctive form (“might
have been”) highlights. Not only does Shelley emphasise the perceived class and
civil war dimension of Peterloo in an open letter to The Examiner (3 November
1819) when he voices his horror at the news “that a troop of the enraged master
manufacturers are let loose with sharpened swords upon a multitude of their starv-
ing dependents” (1964 II, 136; my emphasis), but in the first part of TMoA, he
also depicts the devastation that Anarchy and his train wreaks upon England as
amounting to civil war. Echoing the key words from this letter, Shelley evokes a
similar image of class violence in the poem: King Anarchy and his “mighty troop”
(l. 42), and the bourgeois yeomanry as his “hired murders” (l. 60), are “Trampling
to a mire of blood / The adoring multitude” (ll. 40-41; my emphasis). The poem
seems to suggest that Anarchy already firmly reigns in an England on the brink
of civil war. As Shelley emphasises in PVR, civil war is precisely characterised by
the utter and “sudden disruption of the bonds of social life” (1920, 90). This is
accentuated by the beginning of TMoA and Shelley’s own reaction to the Peterloo
Massacre in the open letter. In his assumption that the massacre marks an erup-
tion of class war Shelley was not alone, as a wide variety of texts and caricatures
suggests.6 Among them is George Cruikshank’s popular caricature “Massacre at St.
Peter’s or Briton’s Strike Home!!!” (August 1819), which shows a mounted troop
of obese yeomanry men cutting down emaciated lower-class figures, some of them
dressed in rags. As the subtitle alludes to the eponymous patriotic song, which was

6 As already pointed out, Peterloo unleashed dormant social tensions. As Edward Royle asserts,
“the meeting [at St. Peter’s Field] was held against a background of social tensions which were
potentially revolutionary” but that the “real danger came after news of the massacre spread”
(2000, 52 & 53). Royle and Walvin further stress the importance of Peterloo for the polarisa-
tion of class conflict in the period in their claim that it, “more than any other single event in
the period 1815-1832, helped feed the hostility of working-class reformers to the government
and the social class from which the yeomanry was recruited” (1982, 119). John Mark Gardner
identifies the aftermath of Peterloo as “the largest, and most politically and socially conscious
display of class conflict that Britain has ever seen” (2002, 18). He argues that in “many of the
numerous pamphlets released relating to the massacre is a realisation that a class war is taking
place” (45). Some critics have investigated Shelley’s engagement with popular caricature in his
1819 texts. Scrivener traces links between TMoA’s iconography and the illustrated political sat-
ires that William Hone and George Cruikshank were publishing at around the same time (see
1982, 200-209).
98

often sung aboard the ships of the Royal Navy, it is sarcastically suggested that the
yeomanry consider it as their patriotic duty to wage war on the poor. With a “call
to class warfare” (Patten 1992, 154), their fat leader spurs on his equally fat men:
“Down with’em! Chop em down my brave boys: give them no quarter they want to
take our Beef & Pudding from us. —& remember the more you Kill the less poor
rates you’ll have to pay so go it Lads show your Courage & your Loyalty!” This
sinister command to massacre the poor parodies the bourgeois propaganda that the
poor are waging a war on the rich and robbing their possessions. While it cynically
inverts allegations made by radicals that the rich are gorging themselves on the
stolen produce of the poor, the obesity of the yeomen provides visual evidence for
the validity of these accusations.

Image I George Cruikshank “Massacre at St. Peter’s or ‘Britons strike home’!!!” (August
1819) © Trustees of the British Museum

When Shelley expresses his outrage about “the troop of the enraged master manu-
facturers” butchering the starving lower-class demonstrators, then he locates the
source of class violence and lawlessness as much in the bourgeois militia as Cruik-
shank, who inscribes the following cynical motto onto the yeomanry’s banner:
“Loyal Man[chester] Yeomanry “Be Bloody, bold & Resolute” “Spur yr proud
 99

Horses & Ride hard in blood.” As previously indicated, Susan Wolfson argues,
conversely, that Shelley fears more an impending scenario of lower-class anarchy –
which a proletarian mass revolution might trigger – than the continuation of the
horror-scenario that the anarchic socio-political status quo represents. However,
this view should be revised considerably. As I have suggested, Shelley is concerned
more about various forms of ‘anarchy’ and not merely about the spectre of lower-
class anarchy. Most importantly, she ignores how Shelley’s sympathies and antipa-
thies are weighed. As Kenneth Neil Cameron rightly emphasises, one should not
exaggerate the importance of Shelley’s fear of the labouring classes vis-à-vis his
revolutionary ideology, at the cost of losing perspective of his by far bitterer antipa-
thy towards aristocracy and the bourgeoisie.7 Shelley’s does not participate in the
bourgeois fear mongering that a lower class social revolution will lead to universal
anarchy, as it is powerfully expressed in George Cruikshank’s caricature “Death or
Liberty! Or Britannia & the Virtues of the Constitution in Danger of Violation
from the Gr[eat] Libertine, Radical Reform!” (1 December 1819). Radical Reform
(allegorised as Death) is assailing the moral foundations of the British State (al-
legorised as Britannia, whom he is about to rape),8 while being cheered on by a
diabolical lower-class mob. Its menacing members are represented as allegories of
“Murder, Robbery, Starvation, Slavery, Blasphemy” and “Immorality,” with some
of them wearing the French revolutionary Cap of Liberty, the bonnet rouge. The
revolutionary figure of Radical Reform has even two of them: one he is wearing
on his head and the other (which has a bell at its end like a fool’s cap) he carries
on a pole (which a serpent has used to wrap itself around). Moreover, he is hiding
his dead man’s skull (being also – like Shelley’s “Anarchy” – an allegory of Death)
behind the mask of Liberty. By contrast in TMoA the mask that the deadly figure
of “Anarchy the Skeleton” (l. 74), who looks “like Death in the Apocalypse” (l. 33),
is wearing is that of British monarch. Shelley’s deadly ‘mob’ is not composed of the
lower classes but of the ruling elite.

7 “While he sympathized with the working mass […] he also feared them, though his fear of the
ruling class was greater and his hatred of them intense” (Cameron 1979, 237). Brecht identifies
even greater sympathies of Shelley with the lower classes. Implicitly attacking Lukàcs’ apotheosis
of the conservative Balzac as the greatest among all realist writers, he argues: “Aber Dichtern wie
Shelley muß sogar ein noch sichtbarerer Platz in der großen Schule der Realisten angewiesen
werden als Balzac, da er die Abstraktion besser ermöglicht als jener und nicht ein Feind der un-
teren Klassen ist, sondern ein Freund” (1969, 44). More recently, David Worrall has reiterated
this claim, maintaining that Shelley’s “poetry was both subversive of oligarchy and supportive of
working-class culture” (2006, 49-50).
8 For a comparison between Cruikshank’s and Shelley’s ‘gendered’ representation of revolution see
Cross 2004.
100

Image II George Cruikshank “Death or Liberty! Or Britannia & the Virtues of the Con-
stitution in Danger of Violation from the Grt Political Libertine, Radical Re-
form!” (December 1819) © Trustees of the British Museum

Although “bourgeois timidity,” as Marc Redfield terms it (2002, 106), represents

an important factor in Shelley’s disquiet about lower-class revolutionary violence,
his struggle with the concept of social revolution is of still greater importance.
What all critics, including Scrivener, have so far failed to fully recognise is how
these anxieties are linked to the emerging concept of social revolution. This in-
volves a fundamentally more dramatic and painful transition than political revolu-
tion. What is at stake are not two competing concepts of government, monarchy
and republic, but two radically differing scenarios of society’s future: one that is
even more strongly divided into two classes fighting a bitter war against each other,
and another that will have managed to resolve class divisions and socioeconomic
oppression at the cost of a forceful social revolution. Such a perspective, I will ar-
gue, will help to elucidate why Shelley “was ultimately unable to choose between
‘reform’ and ‘civil war,’” as Cian Duffy concludes (2005, 186).
 101

2.2 Social Revolution at the Crossroads of Republicanism and Socialism

2.2.1 Shelley’s Revolutionary Paradoxes

The ideological tensions and contradictions that result from his perspective on
contemporary class struggle form the centrepiece of Shelley’s 1819 writings. I go as
far as to contend that their attitude towards social revolution constitutes the defin-
ing feature of these texts, as Shelley himself suggests in a letter to Leigh Hunt dated
1 May 1820. In it he requests Hunt – in vain – to find a potential publisher for a
collection of “popular songs,” which should have included the poems in question
here: TMoA and “Song to the Men of England”.9 Shelley emphasises the point that
their publication would form his poetic contribution towards radical revolution,
towards a fundamental change not purely on a political but also on a social level.
Employing the trope of society as a building, he asserts that a thorough transfor-
mation of the entire contemporary social system is paramount:

The system of society as it exists at present must be overthrown from the

foundations with all its superstructure of maxims & forms, before we shall
anything but disappointment in our intercourse with any but a few select
spirits. […] I wish to ask you if you know of any bookseller who would
like to publish a little volume of popular songs wholly political, & destined
to awaken & direct the imagination of the reformers. I see you smile – but
answer my question. (Shelley 1964 II, 191; Shelley’s emphasis)

With words that seem to anticipate Marx’s famous terminology of ‘base’ and ‘super-
structure,’ Shelley appears to call for a radical revolution of the present “system of
society” from its “foundations” to its “superstructure.” It is tempting to align Shel-
ley’s terms with Marx’s analogy (see Hoagwood 1988, 120). However, they remain
too vague to do so. Although Shelley does not specify what he understands by these
terms, it seems nevertheless evident that he envisages a violent social revolution
that destroys the present social edifice, as the past participle “overthrown” suggests.
Yet such insistence on transforming the basis of contemporary society clashes both
with the designation of the poems “as wholly political” and their addressees as be-
9 Paul Foot has convincingly argued that Hunt was the wrong person to address. According to
Foot, Hunt was too moderate to risk the inevitable persecution for publishing any of the po-
ems, especially since he “knew how extreme his friend’s [i.e. Shelley’s] political views were.”
Nevertheless, Foot argues, Shelley saw no alternative than to plead with Hunt, since he was not
acquainted with those radical publishers, such as Richard Carlile, who were prepared to face
imprisonment for disseminating radical texts (cf. 1990, 14).
102

ing the moderate “reformers,” a mainly bourgeois political faction that campaigned
for the extension of the franchise and to which Leigh Hunt belonged. This social
and intellectual elitism is further reflected in Shelley’s announcement to limit his
company to the chosen few until change has been effected. It is suggested that
this mammoth task of first destroying today’s society and then rebuilding it from
scratch might be achieved by the higher-class individuals within the paradigm of
socio-political change, either through political reform or political revolution under
the leadership of a socially benevolent higher class elite, the “generous few” as Shel-
ley calls them in this letter (1964 II, 191).
While the apparent preference for reform over revolution in this letter might
be primarily due to tactical considerations – for instance the attempt to entice
the moderate reformer Leigh Hunt to publish the poems – we find comparable
paradoxes in Shelley’s (also unpublished) radical pamphlet, PVR (1819).10 In ideo-
logical terms, this essay wavers between political and social reform and social and
political revolution, thus occupying a transitional space between 18th-century re-
publicanism and 19th-century socialism. “In its ideas,” Paul Foot pointedly states,
“it falls half-way between” Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man (1791/92) and Marx and
Engels’ Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei (1848) (1990, 23). Taking up Foot’s
cue, I will illustrate how a two-way comparison of PVR and TMoA with Paine’s
pamphlet and early writings by Marx allows us to better judge where Shelley stands
regarding political and social revolution.

2.2.2 Tom Paine’s Rights of Man (1791/92): A Foundational Text for Political
Revolution

The central tenet of Paine’s pamphlet is that a political change from monarchy to
republic, “a general revolution in the principle and the construction of Govern-

10 In another letter from Italy, dated 26 May 1820, Shelley asks Hunt again about potential pub-
lishers, this time for PVR. As with his previous enquiry about the poems, Shelley did not receive
a reply, in spite of his downplaying again the radical edge of his writing. Probably to distract
from the explosive (socio-) revolutionary nature of his essay, Shelley describes it as “boldly but
temperately written” and further tries to advertise it as an entirely reformist, non-revolutionary,
pamphlet in the political-philosophical tradition of utilitarianism. Most probably referring to
Bentham’s political pamphlet A Catechism of Parliamentary Reform (1817), he casts his essay
as “a kind of standard book for the philosophical reformer politically considered, like Jeremy
Bentham’s something, but different & perhaps more systematic” (1964 II, 569).
 103

ments,” would automatically spell an end to the exploitation of the poor. For this
reason mere political revolution would be sufficient to ensure social justice:

When we survey the wretched condition of man under the monarchical and
hereditary systems of Government, dragged from his home by one power,
or driven by another, and impoverished by taxes more than by enemies, it
becomes evident that those systems are bad, and that a general revolution
in the principle and construction of Governments is necessary. (Paine 1969,
165)

Paine insists that it is not the economic but the political system that is to blame
for the socioeconomic inequalities in society. Unequal taxation, a political meas-
ure, is seen as the means of exploiting the poor rather than an intrinsic flaw in
the socioeconomic system, a position that is still the dominant one in the radical
British discourse of the 1810s. Crucially, social inequality is not considered as due
to a socioeconomic war between the rich and the poor, between a class that exploits
and one that is being exploited: the view of some of the early French socialists
(e.g. Grachus Babeuf in the 1790s, Louis-Auguste Blanqui in the 1830s and 40s),
German socialists of the 1840s such as Marx and Engels, Moses Heß, and others.
In England it was the agrarian communist Thomas Spence and his followers in
the 1790s and 1800s who advanced socio-revolutionary ideas and criticised the
present socioeconomic system that they aimed to change. As Spence insists, in his
publication that bears the same name as Paine’s pamphlets, Rights of Men (1793),
he “goes farther than Paine’s,” since he “suffers no Private Property, but gives it
all to the Parishes” (Spence 1795, 1; Spence’s emphasis). As he criticises in this
pamphlet, Paine’s idea of political revolution falls short as it does not prevent the
exploitation of labour:

Mr. Paine […] does not hurt the feelings of any gentlemen that is uncon-
nected with the government, and so, of course, may retain their good will,
notwithstanding all the lengths he goes; and may, even with a good grace,
consistent with his reform, enjoy a very handsome estate, and with all his
boasted liberty and equality, may roll in his chariot on the labours of his
tenants. (Spence 1793, 32)

While Spence’s insinuation that Paine did not aim for social revolution as he want-
ed to profit from the socioeconomic system himself seems utterly unfair, he does
identify the blind spot in Paine’s conception of revolution. Paine in Rights of Man
regards the underlying conflict in the monarchic states as a socio-political war, tak-
104

ing place between the people and their rulers, who constitute its true “enemies”
(cf. 1969, 165).11 Therefore, Paine maintains, revolutionary change in the system
of government, from monarchy to democracy, will also solve the socioeconomic
problem of unequal division of property. As he optimistically implies, if the masses
and no longer the few rule, if “[e]very citizen is a member of the Sovereignty,”
then all oppression will cease, including this of an apparent socioeconomic nature.
If “the management of the affairs of a Nation” is no longer “the property of any
particular man or family, but of the whole community, at whose expense it is sup-
ported,” then exploitation will no longer be possible (1969, 165; my emphasis).
The monopoly that a small ruling class holds on politics enables them to force the
masses into providing for them. Thus “property” here carries primarily a political
rather than a socioeconomic meaning. For Paine it is this unequal possession of po-
litical rights, of ‘political property,’ that in turn leads to the inequalities in material
property. If political rule becomes the property of all, this socio-political change
will automatically safeguard the equal distribution of wealth.
It is crucial to note that Paine’s apotheosis of political revolution in Rights of
Man goes considerably beyond the truism that every successful political revolution
inevitably has social implications, too, since it invariably destroys an old societal
order (e.g. the destruction of the ancien régime through the French Revolution).12
More radically, for Paine in Rights of Man, political revolution becomes a cure not
only for all political but also for all social ills. Distinctly taking sides in the debate
about political versus social revolution, Rights of Man insists that socio-political
oppression lies at the root of all socioeconomic exploitation. This in turn results
solely from an unjust political system that enshrines the ideology of a political
inequality among man as the natural order. The economic inequalities among hu-
mans and the exploitation of the majority of society by the minority arise as an
immediate consequence of the political inequality between the social classes. Thus
Paine reduces the socioeconomically motivated class conflict to a struggle between
opposing forms of political governance. To argue with Marx, Paine, in Rights of
Man, his manifesto of political revolution, is caught up in the ideological illusion
11 Even though his self-praise mars his astute criticism, Spence in his pamphlet The End of Oppres-
sion again raises a valid point when he castigates Paine and other republicans for focussing their
attacks on the person of the monarch and the monarchy rather than the system that props them
up: “It is amazing that Paine and the other Democrats should level all their Artillery at Kings,
without striking like Spence at this root of every abuse and of every grievance” (Spence 1795, 5).
12 As pointed out earlier, Marx stresses the necessarily social aspect of any revolution in “Kritische
Randglossen zum Artikel eines Preußen” (1844): “Jede Revolution lös’t die alte Gesellschaft auf;
insofern ist sie social. Jede Revolution stürzt die alte Gewalt; insofern ist sie politisch” (MEGA II,
463; Marx’s emphasis).
 105

characteristic of radical republicanism, a confusion of cause and effect. It blames

the political system for all social ills instead of recognising “in der jetzigen Einrich-
tung der Gesellschaft […] die Quelle der socialen Mängel” (MEGA II, 456-457;
Marx’s emphasis).

2.2.3. The Aporias of Political Revolution in Shelley’s 1819/20s Texts

At first glance, PVR also appears to adhere to such a political view of class domi-
nation and exploitation, as well as to the corresponding belief that a change in
the political systems alone could solve all socioeconomic problems. A closer look,
however, reveals serious doubt about political revolution being the panacea for all
of society’s ills. Pivotally, PVR repeatedly voices socio-revolutionary demands that
go beyond this republican concept of political equality and move toward com-
munist ideas of socioeconomic equality. Indeed PVR adheres to a utopian ideal
of a communist society, as the following endorsement of an equal distribution of
property suggests:

Equality in possessions must be the last result of the utmost refinements

of civilization; it is one of the conditions of that system of society towards
which, with whatever hope of ultimate success, it is our duty to tend. We
may and we ought to advert to it as to the elementary principle, as to the
goal, unattainable, perhaps by us but which, as it were, we revive in our
posterity to pursue. (Shelley 1920, 70-71)

Besides stating this wider utopian, future goal of a socially equal society, Shelley
also puts forward concrete measures that are strongly socio-revolutionary. For in-
stance, he calls for the nationalisation of parts of “the property of the rich” to pay
off Britain’s enormous national debt (cf. 1920, 57) and further demands a radical
redistribution of land and property with the intention of “levelling […] inordinate
wealth” (67). The demands for land redistribution seem strongly reminiscent of
Thomas Spence’s ‘Land Plan.’13

13 For Spence and his followers the redistribution of land after an overthrow of the present govern-
ment formed a key tenet of their revolutionary agenda (For the continuing influence of Spence
on London’s radical underworld in the early 19th century, see e.g. McCalman 1988). As David
Worrall sums up their programme: “Under ‘Spence’s Plan’ all land was to be owned by the peo-
ple, administered by the parish, and all rental profits distributed equally to every man, woman
and child. This was to be implemented by a revolutionary uprising or coup d’état. […] It was
106

Although – according to Seidel-Höppner’s definition – all these measures form key

components of social revolution, paradoxically, Shelley seems to consider them as
an integral part of political revolution, or even reform.14 Most pointedly, and at
the same time most vexingly, these tensions and paradoxes become apparent in
the following passage from PVR, in which Shelley links the demands for universal
suffrage and the abolition of the monarchy to the redistribution of wealth, in par-
ticular to the nationalisation of unfarmed land:

I do not understand why those reasoners who propose at any price an im-
mediate appeal to universal suffrage, because it is that which is injustice to
withhold, do not insist, on the same ground, on the immediate abolition,
for instance, of monarchy and aristocracy, and the levelling of inordinate
wealth, and an agrarian distribution, including the parks and chases of the
rich, of the uncultivated districts of the country. No doubt the institution of
universal suffrage would by necessary consequence immediately tend to the
temporary abolition of these forms; because it is impossible that the people,
having attained the power, should fail to see, what the demagogues now
conceal from them, the legitimate consequence of the doctrines through
which they had attained it. (Shelley 1920, 67; Shelley’s underlining)

Here the ideology and the rhetoric of political and social reform, political and
social revolution inextricably merge, making it is almost impossible to isolate one
from the other. In Shelley’s eyes overthrowing the monarchy and nationalising the
land of the rich seems to be part of the same revolutionary movement. Necessar-
ily, a political revolution will “immediately” lead to a social revolution, since the
former politically emancipates and empowers the poor majority of the populace.
The new government democratically elected by the masses will not hesitate to in-
stitute social measures to redistribute property and wealth. However, this is likely
to lead to a violent socioeconomic confrontation with the ousted ruling class, thus
endangering social peace and stability. Indeed, for Shelley it is such a scenario of
bloody social revolution including the spectre of open class war and prolonged

an ideology which brooked no compromise and had the participation of its culture” (1992, 2).
Anne Janowitz has shown how the ideas of Spence and his followers had a key impact on Ro-
mantic poetry (1998, 71-112): an influence she also traces in Shelley’s poems TMoA and Queen
Mab (1998, 97-108).
14 Patrick Brantlinger regards such a blurring of the limits between political and social reform on
the one side, and political and social revolution on the other as characteristic of radical middle-
class authors who wrote before 1829-1832. Shelley and other contemporary writers, “adopted
revolutionary positions” because of “their political isolation,” he argues. In contrast to their suc-
cessors, “the tools of gradual social improvement seemed out of reach” to them (cf. 1977, 16).
 107

conflict about property: “a civil war” that constitutes “the legitimate consequence”
of any violent political transformation and the disquieting insight that the “dema-
gogues” who aim to incite the masses to overthrow the political system are careful
to obscure (1920, 67).
Shelley here echoes – and at the same time critically reflects upon – Paine’s
tenet put forward in Rights of Man, nearly thirty years earlier, that political revolu-
tion would automatically effect positive social change, including the end of socio-
economic oppression of the poor. The fundamental difference, however, between
Paine’s and Shelley’s views is that the former, from his political republican per-
spective, regards socioeconomic exploitation as a function of the political system,
whereas Shelley is beginning to move towards a proto-Marxist view that regards
the political system as a secondary function, a superstructure, built upon a socio-
economic system. This fundamental paradigm shift is reflected in the way Shelley
subtly changes the semantics of those entities that have traditionally constituted
the main targets of revolutionary republicanism: the monarchy and the aristocracy.
Shelley’s hopes and anxieties about revolutionary change can only be adequately
understood if one considers carefully how he extends these socio-political concepts
to include a decidedly socioeconomic dimension. As mentioned earlier, ‘monar-
chy’ in PVR constitutes not a political system of government, but the political expres-
sion of the dominance of a certain socioeconomic class; it has “represented in truth
the interest of the rich” (Shelley 1920, 37-38). Shelley’s understanding of the term
‘aristocracy’ in the essay acquires an even more pronounced socioeconomic dimen-
sion. Aristocracy not only includes the old feudal, hereditary, aristocratic order, but
crucially also the bourgeois capitalists. In a predominantly socioeconomic sense,
an aristocrat for him is anyone who lives by exploiting the labour of others while
keeping the profit for himself. This becomes evident when he defines aristocracy
in “that ordinary sense which signifies that class of persons who possess a right to
the produce of the labour of others, without dedicating to the common service any
labour in return” (1920, 43). He further underlines that even the greatest politi-
cal revolution has never tried to abolish this “class of persons, whose existence is
a prodigious anomaly in the social system” (43). The increasing hegemony of the
bourgeoisie and breakthrough of capitalism, which the modern political revolu-
tions have secured (in particular the English Revolutions in the 17th century and
the French Revolution), have only led to “the establishment of a new aristocracy
which has its basis in funds as the old one has its basis in force” (43). Blunt military
force has been replaced by the much subtler violence of the financial dealings and
108

entrepreneurial ventures of industrial capitalism.15 Political justice may have in-

creased through these revolutions, but social justice has not. Understanding equal
justice in a decidedly social sense, Shelley indirectly criticises the French Revolu-
tion for this omission, when he asserts that “there has never been an approach in
practice towards any plan of political society modelled on equal justice, at least
in the complicated mechanism of modern life” (44). Shelley’s ideological shift to-
wards social equality demonstrates his growing awareness that any further effective
revolutionary action must radically transform social politics and social econom-
ics. He is unable, however, to effect an unequivocal prioritisation in terms of the
competing concepts concerning social revolution, political revolution, and reform.
This also becomes evident when, in the passage from PVR quoted above, he
casts doubt on the concept of revolutionary transformation as a whole. The change
from monarchy to democracy “would by necessary consequence immediately tend
to the temporary abolition of these forms” of socioeconomic exploitation. Al-
though a political revolution is thought to lead to a momentary increase in political
and social justice, this will be bought at a high price: a dramatic long-term rise in
political and social insecurity. Therefore a social republican system emerging out
of revolution is not likely to last long, since the violence that invariably accompa-
nies it is likely to provoke a counterrevolution. The crucial difference to Paine is
that Shelley is more worried about the prospect of prolonged class war, which he
regards as the inevitable consequence of the violent establishment of a republic.
He even questions the fundamental benefits of such change in the system of gov-
ernment. Although in principle he strongly endorses a republican state form and
full democracy, bourgeois class fears apparently make him favour a parliamentary
monarchy with limited suffrage:

A Republic, however just in its principle and glorious in its object, would
through the violence and sudden change which must attend it, incur a great
risk of being as rapid in its decline as in its growth. […] A civil war, which
might be engendered by the passions attending on this mode of reform,
would confirm in the mass of the nation those military habits which have
been already introduced by our tyrants, and with which liberty is incompat-
ible. (Shelley 1920, 67-68)

15 In French and German revolutionary discourse and literature, this notion that the bourgeoisie
constitutes such a shadow ‘aristocracy,’ a moneyed aristocracy (‘l’aristocratie d’argent’ or ‘Gel-
daristokratie’), only seems to gain wider currency in the 1830s. (See Chapter 3 of this study.)
One of the first to develop this notion in the British context was the radical John Thelwall who
uses the terms “aristocracy of the Royal Exchange” and “aristocracy of commerce” as early as
1795 (1995, 285).
 109

With some justification one could claim that Shelley’s fear of the militant masses
forms a stereotypical bourgeois-liberal anxiety, a view that is further supported
when he declares that the masses are yet unripe for democracy. They “should be
instructed in the whole truth” and “their rights” before any revolution is attempted
in order for them to be morally ready to partake in the running of the state (cf.
1920, 67). Shelley’s allegorical figure of the Shape in TMoA echoes this view that
the moral education of the lower classes forms the decisive step in the fight for
emancipation and liberation. 16 She recommends “Science, Poetry, and Thought”
(l. 254) as beacons in their struggle. Moreover, she instructs the masses to cultivate
their virtues, “Spirit, Patience, Gentleness” (l. 258), rather than improving their
insurrectionary skills. Naturally, this exhortation reflects deeply rooted upper-class
anxieties about the savagery and barbarity of the uneducated and uncivilised pro-
letarians. Yet it is problematic to regard the Shape here as Shelley’s exact political-
poetic double, as Richard Cronin has argued. According to him, she seems “a
mythopoeic version of the Whig aristocrat, authorized by his culture and moral
refinement to act as the champion of the inarticulate masses,” hence forming a
direct projection of Shelley’s alleged own socio-political identity (2000, 179).
However, Shelley considerably transcends such a liberal Whiggish stance as, for
instance, his socialist proposals in PVR, such as the redistribution of land owned
by the rich gentry, prove. Furthermore, it is not sufficient to explain Shelley’s re-
luctance to embrace emphatically either political or social mass revolution solely by
class fears. Such simplistic readings of his 1819 texts fall short of the complexity
and depth of his concerns raised in them. It is true that he is worried that a violent
uprising of the oppressed masses will unleash a vicious cycle of revolutionary vio-
lence and counter violence. However, his anxieties are linked to the seminal insight
that a hidden socioeconomic war, which underlies all existing social relations, is
taking place between a class of exploiters and a class of the exploited: a radical
departure from a republican position on contemporary society. As the Shape em-

16 The materialisation of this allegorical figure takes place in stanzas XXVI to XXX. Immediately
killing Anarchy, she thereby rescues Hope from being trampled to death by the train of Anarchy.
Through a desperate act of self-sacrifice Hope, who looks “more like Despair” (l. 87), tries to
stop this wave of destruction. The Shape’s subsequent address to the masses does not merely
take up the majority of the poem’s lines (226 lines out of 370), but also engages with poem’s
key concerns. While, with certain justification, some critics have identified her as an alterna-
tive revolutionary incarnation of the Goddess Britannia – she is first described in the poem as
“a Shape arrayed in mail” (l. 110) – I will refer to her as ‘the Shape.’ In my opinion, this term
describes best her protean ambiguity which constitutes her defining trait both regarding her
changing appearance and her shifting ideology.
110

phasises, the lower classes are exposed to socioeconomic violence on a daily basis
that blights their existence and causes them to despair:

LXIX

“From the haunts of daily life

Where is waged the daily strife
With common wants and common cares
Which sows the human heart with tares [weeds] – (ll. 279-282).

The life of the poor is a daily struggle for survival which contrasts with the daily
attempts of the rich to increase their wealth in their “prison-halls of wealth and
fashion” (l. 287). Both poor and rich are caught up in a violent socioeconomic sys-
tem that creates riches and poverty at the price of general dehumanisation. These
insights into violence, apparent or hidden, as the governing principle of both pro-
letarian life and the existence of the rich discredit both the notion that a mass
revolution could be limited to a purely political revolution, as well as the hope that
the violence unleashed by it would stop with the achievement of political equality.
For Shelley these beliefs are a delusion, since what the proletarians are fighting for
goes far beyond the issues of reform, political participation, and emancipation. In
essence, what they are struggling for is not merely social equality, but a reversal of
their fundamental alienation from humanity.
As Shelley clarifies in the lines immediately following this passage, this fun-
damental isolation of the poor from the political and the social, indeed from any
human sphere, has left indelible scars on the lower classes, scars that a conventional
revolution will be unable to heal. Ever since “the Roman Empire, that vast and
successful scheme for the enslaving [of ] the most civilised portion of mankind, to
the epoch of the French Revolution” history has been a succession of oppression
and exploitation, Shelley bitterly remarks at the beginning of PVR (1920, 1-2).
This legacy of violence has alienated the masses from their human essence and
turned them into a potentially militant force. Referring to the poor being forcibly
recruited as soldiers – a practice still fresh in the collective memory only four years
after the end of the Napoleonic Wars – Shelley seemingly casts the proletarian sol-
dier as the epitome of a wider alienation of the lower classes from humanity which
amounts to spiritual enslavement:

From the moment that a man is a soldier, he becomes a slave. He is taught

obedience; his will is no longer, which is the most sacred prerogative of men,
guided by his own judgement. He is taught to despise human life and suffer-
ing; this is the universal distinction of slaves. (Shelley 1920, 68)
 111

While at first glance Shelley, in his depiction of the proletarian who was made a
soldier, seems to re-inscribe the aristocratic-bourgeois horror image of the lower-
class mob as a murderous army, in truth he turns the accusations of moral deprav-
ity and inhumane cruelty against the ruling classes themselves. The latter (their
brutish masters with their cruel and inhumane skills) force the proletarians to
become beast-like slavish creatures, without reason, will, or morals. Again, as with
the terms ‘anarchy,’ ‘monarchy,’ and ‘aristocracy,’ Shelley achieves this juxtaposi-
tion by introducing a semantic shift in the meaning of the term ‘slave.’ When he
defines disrespect “of human life and suffering” as “the universal distinction of
slaves,” he effectively casts the bourgeois masters as slaves in mind and soul. They
are the ones who truly despise human life, especially if the human beings belong to
the working classes, be it the protesters on the occasion of the Peterloo Massacre or
workers forced to produce under inhumane conditions.
Shelley’s 1819 texts focus particularly strongly on the latter aspect, the violence
intrinsic to the capitalist systems of production. Sustained socioeconomic exploita-
tion has exactly the same de-humanising and alienating impact on the lower classes
as direct military force. If anything, in its insidious workings, it has an even more
profoundly devastating effect on the proletarian existence and their social identity.
As both PVR and in TMoA stress, exploitation is worse under capitalism than it
has ever been, even under the darkest most tyrannical regimes of the past.17 In spite
of England being a parliamentary monarchy, human rights, let alone social rights,
for the lower classes are non-existent. This conviction becomes evident when the
Shape in TMoA maintains that the exploitation inherent in the capitalist industrial
process robs the proletarians of their social identity:

XLVI

“Tis to be slave in soul

And to hold no strong control
Over your own wills, but be
All that others make of ye. (ll. 184-187)

17 The Shape in TMoA exposes how the rich capitalists, aided by the introduction of paper money,
“the Ghost of Gold [,] / Take from Toil a thousandfold,” thus making a substantially larger profit
from the exploitation of labour than was ever possible in the feudal “tyrannies of old” (cf. ll.
176-179). The more sophisticated mechanisms of advanced capitalism enable them to gain a
far greater percentage of labour’s surplus value. “Neither the Persian monarchy nor the Roman
empire […] ever extorted a twentieth part the proportion now extorted from the property and
labour of the inhabitants of Great Britain,” Shelley demonstrates this view in PVR (1920, 39-
40).
112

Echoing the exact key words of the passage from PVR quoted above, “slave” and
“will,” the Shape implies that it is their profession as proletarians, as white slaves,
that deprives them of a will, much like in the example of the soldier. Both the
labourer as well as the soldier are forced to abandon their human self and are be-
ing brutally shaped by external forces, thus resulting in a state of utter alienation.
While the latter is being turned into a killing machine, the labourer is being turned
into a machine to produce goods for the sole profit of the capitalist master and for
consumption by the upper classes. In both processes a comparable degree of physi-
cal and psychological violence is involved and both radically alienate the poor from
their human self. These are the implications of the Shape’s definition of “Freedom”
ex negativo, when she lectures the labouring classes what “slavery” means to them:

XXXVI

“What is Freedom? – ye can tell

That which slavery is, too well –
For its very name has grown
To an echo of your own.

XL

“Tis to work and have such a pay

As just keeps life from day to day
In your limbs, as in a cell
For the tyrants’ use to dwell.

XLI

“So that ye for them are made

Loom, and plough, and sword, and spade,
With or without your own will bent
To their defence and nourishment. (ll. 156-167)

‘Slavery’ here is defined no longer in its traditional republican sense as a politically

oppressive condition but rather as a socioeconomically exploitative condition, remi-
niscent of chattel slavery. Shelley here does not attack the tools of extortion em-
ployed by an authoritarian government, such as excessive taxes levied on the poor,
but mounts a much more fundamental critique of the socioeconomic system. It
blames the capitalist process of production itself, exposing it as a form of brutal
class violence. This perspective on the cause of destitution differs considerably not
 113

only from Paine’s verdict in Rights of Man that the poor are “impoverished by taxes
more than by enemies,” but also stands in sharp contrast to many of the contem-
porary radical voices, such as John Wade or William Cobbett.18 Like Paine, they
also identify the high taxes levied on the poor as the primary cause of their destitu-
tion. Noel Thompson stresses that the tendency to blame the political rather than
the socioeconomic system for the exploitation of the poor was widespread among
radical writers of this period. He maintains that to view exploitation as caused by
political factors rather than by inherent flaws in the economic system, to regard it
as a symptom of bad governance rather than one of intrinsic exploitative nature
of capitalism, forms the common characteristic of the political economy that the
contemporary radical press developed.19
The Shape mounts a more direct attack on the socioeconomic system as she
reveals how the labourers are being deprived of the surplus value of their labour
in the process of production. They are being paid so little for their hard work that
they are barely able to survive. Playing with the double meaning of “cell” – prison
cell and cell of the body20 – the Shape implies that they are imprisoned in a life
18 The following angry attack on the excessive taxation of the poor from the introduction to John
Wade’s Black Book (1819) merely forms a particularly vociferous indictment of a malpractice
which also William Cobbett, Richard Carlile, and others identified as the main cause for the
extreme poverty in Britain: “Instead of lightening the burdens of the people by retrenchment,
THREE MILLIONS of additional taxes are to be imposed to supply the waste of the govern-
ment; and upon whom are they to be levied? Not upon the clergy, the fundholders, nor the
landholders; – no! upon none of these, but upon the useful classes, upon those classes we are
now addressing. But it is upon the working classes that the fresh burdens fall with the most
merciless weight. – Instead of relieving them from the salt-tax, the duties on leather, soap, and
candles; they are now loaded with new imposts still more oppressive, and pursued through the
whole circle of their enjoyments – beer – clothing – tea – tobacco – nothing has escaped the
rapacity of their oppressors” (Wade 1820, 1). In 1820 Cobbett claims categorically that when
“we take a view of the effects of taxation” there is no need to look “further for the cause of our
misery” (1998 VIII, 492; Cobbett’s emphasis).
19 As Noel Thompson sums up, “exploitation as understood by writers in the radical press of
the period 1816-1821 was essentially the product of factors exogenous to the functioning of
economy, such as money juggles, taxation, and ad hoc individual expropriations. […] Economic
ills and disturbances were not interpreted by radical writers as originating within the economic
system; rather, they had their origin outside it. Such an analysis may have given material sub-
stance to attacks upon the political status quo but it did not contribute much in theoretical terms
to the formation of a popular, working-class political economy” (1984, 121).
20 The OED points out that while the precise modern biological sense of ‘cell’ as the “ultimate
element in organic structures” was only determined in the 20th century, it had already been
foreshadowed in scientific discourse throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. In its meaning as
an “enclosed space, cavity, or sac, in organized bodies” as well as in its more specific sense as
“minute cavities or interstices in the structure of any tissue, mineral substance, etc.,” it was al-
114

of lethal toil. Even more radical than Cobbett’s definition of “labouring classes”
as “those who have no property in anything but their labour” (1998 VII, 494
in TMoA), the labouring classes do not hold any sort of ownership, neither over
their labour nor over their own bodies. Life inhabits only their tortured physical
frame “for the tyrants’ use.” One could even argue that these lines evoke an image
of the capitalists as parasites that usurp the cells of the labourers’ bodies for their
own purposes of maximising profit. This brutal exploitation of proletarian labour
and their bodies threatens the very lives of the labourers. As the capitalists claim
ownership over their last two remaining forms of property – their bodies and their
labour – proletarian existence turns into an eternal struggle for survival as their
alienated labour keeps them scarcely alive “from day to day” (l. 161).
This alienation of the producers, both from their labour and their products,
results also in alienation from their essence as human beings. As the Shape asserts,
when they are made “slave[s] in soul,” they are psychologically and spiritually de-
prived of their individual human self. In an ironic reversal of the material process
of production, the labourers thus become products of their capitalist exploiters
when they are described as being “all that others make” of them (cf. ll. 184-187).
Total alienation strips the labourers of their humanity and reduces them to the
subhuman status of inanimate objects. Utterly reified and deprived of any will of
their own, they are turned into to the very machines and tools that they use in
their labour. They are “made / Loom and plough, and sword” for the capitalists.21
However, in contrast to objects, they are capable of acquiring consciouness of the
inhumanity of their exploitation; a move the Shape attempts in Stanza LI:

“This is Slavery – savage men,

Or wild beast within a den
Would not endure not as ye do –
But such ills they never knew. (ll. 205-208)

Alluding to different ways of ‘knowing’ “Slavery” – to passively experience the suf-

fering or to also perceive the causes of it and potential means to remedy it – the
Shape suggests that a full consciousness of their situation is the necessary prereq-

ready used in the early 19th century. The OED quotes an anatomy book from 1819, which uses
“cell” in the biological sense of cellular membrane: “[…] by means of communication of the
cells of this membrane […] the butchers blow up their veal.”
21 In PVR, Shelley, without resorting to metaphors, directly indicts the capitalist practice of using
the workers as machinery. Referring in particular to the particularly outrageous exploitation of
child labour, he accuses the capitalists of turning “children into lifeless and bloodless machines”
(1920, 42-43).
 115

uisite for revolutionary action by the proletarians. This conclusion anticipates the
one of Marx. While similarly emphasising the total alienation and dehumanisa-
tion of the proletariat, Marx asserts, in the “Einleitung Zur Kritik der Hegel’schen
Rechts-Philosophie,” (1844) that only a social and not a political revolution is able
to liberate this class. Since its social condition is “der völlige Verlust des Menschen,”
a radical social revolution aiming for “die völlige Wiedergewinnung des Menschen”
is the only way to emancipate the working class (cf. MEGA II, 182; Marx’s em-
phasis). However, the problem of what form this social revolution ought to take
remains. Should it be a violent proletarian revolution, a violent “Protestation des
Menschen gegen das entmenschte Leben” (cf. MEGA II, 462) as Marx will posit,
or should it aim to succeed by moral force alone?

2.3 The Ethics of Proletarian Resistance: Moral or Physical Force?

2.3.1 Passive or Violent Resistance to Social Exploitation? Richard Carlile and

Shelley

Shelley’s scenario of a non-violent, moral, and social revolution, which aims to

overcome the socioeconomic crisis of capitalism and class struggle, must be regard-
ed as the logical consequence of his social and political philosophy. However, it
also constitutes a critical reaction to contemporary radical voices that use a similar
analysis of the contemporary socioeconomic and socio-political situation to justify
a violent proletarian uprising against the system.
This can be illustrated by comparing TMoA to a series of articles on Peterloo
written by the radical self-taught journalist and former artisan Richard Carlile for
his journal The Republican in August and September 1819. In these, he undertakes
a rudimentary analysis of the exploitation of labour that leads to a strong endorse-
ment of proletarian revolutionary action. One key concern of both Carlile’s and
Shelley’s economic analyses is what Noel Thompson terms the increasing “pro-
letarianisation of labour” throughout the 19th century, “on which contemporary
commentators […] critical of the existing economic and social arrangements inevi-
tably focused” (1998, 33). Since the rise of the financial and industrial bourgeoisie,
the “institution of this double aristocracy,” Shelley contends, “the worth of the
labour of twenty hours now, in food and clothing, is equivalent to the worth of
ten hours then” (1920, 47-48). Carlile is aware of the concrete consequences of
this, regarding the proletarianisation of labour, combined with an increase in the
116

cost of living (in particular of basic food), as the root of the present socio-political
crisis in Britain. Abandoning the classical radical view that the suffering of the poor
is solely due to excessive and unfair taxation, and could be alleviated by political
revolution that would overthrow the corrupt monarchial system, Carlile insists
that the only means of ending the extreme misery of the poor is for them to obtain
“a fair requital for their hard labour.” Similarly, the Shape in TMoA regards the
proletarianisation of labour, the payment of an unfair and inadequate wage, as one
of the principal causes for the labourers’ precarious living situation: “Tis to work
and have such a pay / As just keeps life from day to day” (ll. 160-161). Extending
the concept of freedom, as the Shape does in TMoA, from a narrow political to a
comprehensive socioeconomic sense, Carlile demands the speedy liberation of the
poor from material oppression:

The great mass of the People of this country are not only deprived of even
the least shadow of liberty, but are deprived of the necessaries of life, and
their only means of obtaining them – a fair requital for their hard labour.
[…] The powers that be, have not only by excessive taxation raised the price
of the necessaries of life to an extraordinary pitch, but by pressing so very
hard on the manufacturing and commercial interest have caused a diminu-
tion of wages to the labourer, in a ratio equal to the increase of the price of
bread and other necessaries. This has produced the extreme of misery. Those
who have employ cannot not even supply themselves and their families with
the necessaries of life, and those who have none are perishing daily […].
(Carlile 1970 I, 34 & 35)

The lack of political liberty goes hand in hand with a lack of socioeconomic justice,
the deprivation of basic material goods.
Although Carlile and Shelley agree on this point and even on the remedy, i.e. a
reversal of the proletarianisation of labour, there exists fundamental disagreement
between them on the means by which to achieve this goal. Claims by critics such
as Gardner that Shelley is largely “in agreement with the radical press” (2002, 133)
are wrong in this regard, for in sharp contrast to Shelley, whose Shape advocates
non-violent resistance, Carlile concludes from this scenario of total socioeconomic
exploitation and material suffering that lower-class physical force constitutes the
only solution to this crisis:

Is it not in the course of nature that you should conspire together to get rid
of such evils as those? […] those authorities treat both you and your com-
plaints with contempt; and does it not follow as an imperative necessity that
 117
you should threaten to effect by force what you find unattainable by milder
means? The necessity is not only a justification of your threatening, but of
your putting that threat into execution. The Law of Nature pronounces that
resolution just, and commands you to act on it. (Carlile 1970 I, 34)

Very radically, Carlile here not only conjures up the threat of social revolution,
but also advocates putting it into practice. Harking back both to the ancient Brit-
ish constitutional right to insurrection as a legitimate form of self-defence against
tyranny and invoking natural law, Carlile here openly calls for proletarian revo-
lution.22 In contrast to the Shape, who advocates non-violent protest, Carlile de-
mands forceful resistance, “self-defence,” against any further state and class vio-
lence against the people to prevent another Peterloo Massacre from occurring:

In advising you to call another public meeting, I would earnestly recom-

mend you to do it at the earliest time possible […] and at the same time
seek some more advantageous spot for self-defence, in case of attack, than
St. Peter’s Field – it was, of all places, the most unfortunate for an unarmed
people to be assailed by a brutal armed force. We must not shrink from duty
from the terror of a similar attack. Let every man be prepared to sell his life
as dearly as possible, and I’ll pledge mine that we can beat off the combined
Yeomanry Cavalry of the whole country. (Carlile 1970, 35-36)

Carlile’s advice to the people to devise an effective strategy of defence for the next
meeting is diametrically opposed to the Shape’s, when she calls upon the people
to gather for “a vast assembly” (l. 295).23 For the Shape’s rallying words, shouts of
“Liberty” (l. 335) have to act as a substitute for forceful lower-class action. In con-
trast to Carlile’s pragmatic and actively revolutionary view, in the Shape’s idealistic
call to ‘arms’, words are to replace weapons and armour as the people’s means both
for self-defence and a counterattack:

22 John Belchem refers to this right and emphasises the crucial importance it held for the radicals
after Peterloo. For the leaders of the “constitutional radicals”, the question whether to revolt or
not formed a major dilemma. Belchem asserts that in the prolonged arguments over the ques-
tion of violent action, “physical resistance,” led to the loss of any revolutionary momentum
(cf. 1996, 49).
23 Carlile was not alone in calling for armed mass meetings. As Iain McCalman shows, both
Northern and London radicals planned such meetings throughout much of August and the
autumn of 1819 (see 1988, 134-137). The section led by Robert Wedderburn “openly urged
members to attend the forthcoming London meeting of 25 August, armed” (134).
118
LXXIV

“Be your strong and simple words

Keen to wound as sharpened swords,
And wide as targes [shields] let them be,
With their shade to cover ye. (ll. 299-302)

It would be too facile, however, to dismiss the Shape’s warning against violent
revolution as merely expressing bourgeois fears of the revolutionary proletariat. It
becomes only fully understandable when one considers Shelley’s concept of moral
revolution. Theoretically this strategy of moral resistance appears to find a solution
to the problem that an endless succession of violence and counter-violence may
create a vicious circle. Practically, however, as she is well aware, her advice means
further – potentially senseless – loss of lower-class life, for the consequence will just
be another massacre in the style of Peterloo. The idea that mere words can protect
the poor from upper-class violence proves to be an illusion even in the Shape’s vi-
sion within the fiction of Shelley’s poem. The Yeomanry is likely to butcher the
passive people again, as the Shape’s own words testify in Stanza LXXXIV, when she
urges the masses stoically and passively to endure the frenzy of killing and mutila-
tion. While she is conscious of the numerical strength of the masses – “ye are many,
they are few” – she nonetheless tells them to remain passive and to accept their
martyrdom: “Look upon as they slay / Till their rage has died away” (ll. 346-347).
The Shape suggests that their aggressors will then experience the moral feeling of
shame for their actions, an emotion which will form the foundation for a thorough
ethical transformation in the oppressors. Experiencing profound shame will lead
the common soldiers to distance themselves from the yeomanry, to fraternise with
the people and turn against their oppressors:

LXXXV

“Then they will return with shame

To the place from where they came,
And the blood thus shed will speak
In hot blushes on their cheek.

[…]
 119
LXXXVI

“And the bold, true warriors

Who have hugged Dangers in wars
Will turn to those who would be free,
Ashamed of such base company. (ll. 347-350 & ll. 356-359)

The people’s non-violent moral victory manifests itself in the conversion of the
army. Having been trained to become killing machines, the soldiers are slowly
regaining their humanity, from which they have been alienated. Rhetorically this
is expressed through a personification that is combined with a metonymy and
a synaesthesia: the spilled blood of the crowd will proclaim the moral defeat of
their murderers through the latter’s flushed faces that recalls the people’s blood
they have spilt. However, this means that in the Shape’s vision, the people are not
allowed to speak up for themselves and must remain silent. Metonymically, their
blood “will speak up,” thus constituting both a symbol of the people’s martyrdom
and the crucial sign that announces the incipient ethical transformation of their
enemies. The rhetorical intricacy with which this argument is put forward reflects
the constructed nature of Shelley’s scenario of a moral revolution. To maintain that
passive resistance will suffice to achieve a fundamental transition of the politically
and equally repressive society is unconvincing, theoretically as well as practically.24
By contrast, Carlile criticises the passivity displayed by the crowd at Peterloo,
and implies that at a future meeting an arming of the masses will be the only way
to prevent another massacre from occurring. He also asserts that the numerical
24 Ian Pindar, in a review of Mark Kurlansky’s book on the history of non-violence (2007), finds a
general misconception behind the strategy of passive resistance that could also be said to apply
to the Shape’s argument: “Violence is immoral, the argument goes, so by not defending them-
selves pacifists can claim a moral victory, eventually shaming their opponent into submission.
The flaw in this argument is that it assumes that one’s opponent is capable at experiencing shame
at his actions. Often the only dilemma pacifists pose to their aggressors is how to dispose of so
many corpses. Even Kurlansky concedes that absolute passivity might result in annihilation,
which seems a high price to pay for the moral high ground” (2007, 8). He further explicitly
points out that this reckoning behind the strategy of passive resistance “is sadly contradicted
by the Peterloo massacre” (8). Nevertheless several critics have regarded the Shape’s commands
as a viable revolutionary strategy: a convincing call for “passive resistance” and “civil disobedi-
ence” (Dawson 1980, 194) that anticipates Gandhi’s (see Curran 1975, 195) and Martin Luther
King’s successful campaigns of non-violent resistance in the 20th Century (see Leader & O’Neill
2003, 762). By contrast, Richard Cronin emphasises the improbability of “achiev[ing] a non-vi-
olent revolution,” arguing that even the Shape “never seems fully persuaded of the realism of its
own programme” (2000, 177-178). John Mark Gardner points out that the distinction between
the ‘moral’ regular troops who would side with the people if they could, and the yeomanry who
are their sworn enemies forms part of the “radical myth” of Peterloo (see 2002, 134-136).
120

superiority of the armed masses will ensure their military victory over government
forces, if the people mount a determined counter attack, as opposed to Shelley’s
moral victory achieved through passive resistance. Employing the popular iconog-
raphy of Peterloo, of the militia slashing the breasts of women, he writes:25

To me it was a painful moment, to think that such a body of fine reso-

lute men should have been surprised unarmed by a cowardly and ferocious
armed force – cowardly murderers, that would have shrunk from fifty of you
with your pikes; yet who could riotously and wantonly plunge their sabres
into the bosom of women, because they knew the men had no weapons to
protect them. (Carlile 1970, 33)

He does not harbour the Shape’s naïve hope that the regular army will side with
the people, ashamed to be associated with the massacring Yeomanry, and paints a
much more realistic picture of the military’s continued violent reaction to peace-
ful protest. For Carlile the “standing army” (1970 I, 35) is as much implicated in
the brutal suppression of any peaceful lower-class protest, as is the yeomanry. For
him, the sustained upper-class violence not only justifies proletarian counter-vio-
lence, but also establishes this strategy as the only means to procure socio-political
change:

The existing authorities […] have caused the destruction of many advocates
for reform, though strictly peaceable citizens, by their military power, and if
the military will consent to cut the throats of their friends and relatives, we
have no alternative but to prepare to sell our lives as dear as possible; or to
obtain, by the necessary means, the necessary reform. (Carlile 1970 I, 35)

What emerges through Shelley’s and Carlile’s opposing views is the ideological
conflict between physical and moral force as instruments of revolutionary change.
While the Shape discourages lower-class revolutionary violence and advocates
moral force, Carlile advocates physical force and endorses lower-class violence.
However, even Carlile’s endorsement of physical force is based on ethical argu-
ments that state a moral case for legitimate resistance against state violence en-
shrined by the unwritten ancient British Constitution. Moreover, he advocates
defensive violence rather than active insurrection. As Iain McCalman asserts, in
25 Shelley also employs this popular iconography in his open letter to Hunt when he expresses his
outrage at the militia men, who “massacre without distinction of sex or age & cut off women’s
breasts” (1964 II, 137). For a recent comparative analysis of Cruikshank’s and Shelley’s gendered
depiction of revolution in Cruikshank’s 1819 caricatures (including “Massacre at St. Peter’s”)
and Shelley’s poems, respectively, see Cross 2004.
 121

the aftermath of Peterloo “even among [the London] hotheads, arming was still
presumed to be defensive”(134). It was a thin line, however, that divided a call
for active, armed resistance from one for insurgency. In the leader of 4 Septem-
ber 1819, the editor-publisher of the ultra-radical journal The Medusa; or Penny
Politician, Thomas Davison, also reasserts the people’s right to lawful and forceful
resistance, comparing them to the medieval barons who, bearing arms, forced King
John to sign the Magna Carta at Runnymede in 1215. At the same time, however,
he utters a thinly veiled threat that the people will avenge the atrocities committed
against them and gain their rights by force. He insists

[…] that there can be no alternative, betwixt abject submission to tyrannical

magistrates and ministers, and a determination to demand and enforce their
rights with ARMS IN THEIR HANDS, like the barons of Runnymede.
[…] Whatever they may be wanting in force to revenge this horrible transac-
tion, other means can supply; and unless poverty has the magic tendency of
both humbling a people and basterdizing [sic] the common feeling of man-
kind, if the law will not inflict justice, it cannot be wondered if an infuriated
populace administer the law in a more summary way. (Davison 1819, 226;
emphasis in the original)

While Davison in effect calls upon the people to forcefully “revenge” the Peterloo
massacre (if they can muster sufficient military strength), the Shape urges to refrain
from it in an act of ethical superiority over their foes: “Then it is to feel revenge /
Fiercely thirsting to exchange / Blood for Blood – and wrong for wrong – / Do not
thus when ye are strong” (ll. 193-196). In sharp contrast to Shelley both Davison
and Carlile regard the failure the people to forcefully fight for their social rights
as a moral flaw, induced by alienation, rather than a sign of moral strength. It was
however, the ultra-radical preacher Robert Wedderburn, who uttered one of the
most unequivocal calls to insurrection after Peterloo on 15 September, stating that
the goal of the radicals “must be nothing short of revolution” (Quoted in McCal-
man 1988, 135). Moreover, according to the evidence given by a spy during Wed-
derburn’s trial for blasphemy on 19 October 1819, Wedderburn – while discussing
the countrywide meetings scheduled for 1 November – had addressed the meeting
at his chapel “with the loudest voice possible in the following words ‘Therefore all
come armed or it is of no use and be sure you bring plenty of ammunition with
you’” (Wedderburn 1991, 119). As Wedderburn argued, it was vital “to revenge
the murders at Manchester on the 16th August declaring that the revolution had
already began [sic] in blood there and that it must also end in blood here” (118).
In another ‘sermon’ on 13 October he sharply polemicised and blasphemed against
122

any form of passivity including passive resistance: “they tell us to be quiet like that
bloody spooney Jesus Christ who like a Bloody Fool tells when we get a slap on one
side of the Face turn gently round and ask them to slap the other” (122; emphasis
in original). Nevertheless even he maintained that revolutionary violence is legiti-
mate only so far as it as defensive, as he emphasises in the following blasphemous,
mock-heroic passage in which he likens himself to belligerent St. Peter:

But I like jolly old Peter give me a Rusty Sword for as they have declared
War against the people and the Prince Regent has sanctioned it by his fine
vote of thanks, and has turned a deaf ear to our petitions we must redress
our own grievances my motto is Assassinate stab in the dark Oh! the 16th of
August was a glorious day the Blood that was spilled that day has cemented
our Union. Oh! Blood is a fine cement for Blood is thicker than water God
be praised – […]. (Wedderburn 1991, 122)

A comparable revolutionary stance is also advocated – although in a less flamboy-

ant manner – by other ultra-radicals, as an anonymous pamphlet suggests that
was found on the streets of London on the night of 24 August 1819, nine days
after the Peterloo Massacre. It casts physical resistance and planned insurrection
against tyranny as the moral right and duty of the British people: “To a Brave
British People / Britons Arise and take up Arms in Support of your Lawfull [sic]
Rights & Privileges […]” (Quoted after Worrall 1992, 145). In spite of the key
difference between active and passive resistance, this pamphlet recalls the right to
oppose an unlawful government as much as the Shape in TMoA. The reference to
the constitutional British right of resistance, however, here functions as a call for
insurrection, whereas the Shape in TMoA employs the “old laws of England” (l.
331) as a crucial argument to advocate moral resistance.26
The key ideological difference between those (ultra-)radical writers and Shelley
emerges most clearly if one compares the following passage from one of Carlile’s
Peterloo articles with the concluding stanzas of TMoA. Since these passages are
closely interrelated in their imagery, I would even go as far as to maintain that the
ending of TMoA forms a direct, intertextual rebuttal of Carlile’s advice to the lower
classes to start immediate socio-revolutionary action by attacking their enemies.27

26 Dawson ignores this crucial aspect when he argues that the reference to old laws of England
constitutes a purely “tactical appeal to a political tradition” to improve the chances of the poem
being published (cf. 1991, 34).
27 There is positive evidence that Shelley read British newspapers and journals even though he lived
in Italy. In a letter from Livorno to his friend Thomas Love Peacock (dated 9 September 1819)
Shelley thanks him for his “attention in sending the papers which contain the terrible and im-
 123

Like Wedderburn and other contemporary plebeian radicals, Carlile also employs
powerful biblical language to exhort the people to revolution:

There is yet time to recover yourselves, but for your families, and your coun-
try’s sake, defer not till to-morrow, that which should be done to-day. Whilst
you delay, your enemies will seek to weaken you – you cannot be stronger
than at the present time – resolve and you will speedily accomplish – your
enemies have taken the alarm and are on the alert – prepare and strike at
them. Let your voice come round them like the rolling thunder, and let
your indignation flash on them, as the destructive fluid of the terrific light-
ning. The majority of you have nothing to lose and every thing to gain, far
better for you would it be to perish in an attempt to recover for yourselves
and families the necessaries of life, than to perish from the direful effects of
hunger and starvation. (Carlile 1970 I, 6)

A kind of pivotal proletarian revolutionary action is advocated here that bears

strong socio-revolutionary overtones. While the people are still urged to use their
“voice” as a weapon rather than actual arms, the belligerent language and revolu-
tionary imagery suggests armed insurgency (e.g. “flash,” “thunder” and “lighten-
ing” etc.). The aim of any uprising – and here Carlile fundamentally agrees with
Shelley – must be primarily socioeconomic rather than political: “to recover […]
the necessaries of life”, not to gain the right to vote. Yet while Carlile maintains
that the masses have never been “stronger than at the present time” and that the
masses make use of their moral strength by exerting physical force, the Shape ad-
vises them: “Do not thus when ye are strong” (l. 196). Instead she orders the poor
to suppress their revolutionary anger, to “Stand […] calm and resolute” and fend
off their oppressors merely with their composed “looks” that are to function as sub-
stitutes for “weapons” (cf. ll. 319-322). In sharp opposition to Carlile, the masses
are further deprived of any revolutionary voice of their own. Their stoically borne
martyrdom, their “slaughter” at the hands of their class-enemies, will become “Elo-
quent, oracular” (l. 360 & 363), not they themselves:

portant news of Manchester.” He further urges Peacock to provide him with further up-to-date
political news coverage: “Pray, let me have the earliest political news which you consider of im-
portance at this crisis” (Shelley 1964 II, 119; Shelley’s emphasis). Shelley was certainly aware of
Carlile and likely also of his Republican. In an open letter to The Examiner (3 November 1819)
Shelley defends him against the charges of blasphemy that Carlile faced for the publication of
Paine’s Age of Reason.
124
LXXXIX

“And this slaughter to the Nation

Shall steam up like inspiration,
Eloquent, oracular;
A volcano heard afar.

XC

“And these words shall then become

Like Oppression’s thundered doom
Ringing through each heart and brain,
Heard again – again – again – (ll. 364-367).

Both texts, employing traditional revolutionary rhetoric, liken the voice of revolu-
tion to thunder.28 However, in contrast to Carlile where the shouts of the fight-
ing poor merge into one united voice likened to “rolling thunder,” in TMoA the
Shape’s voice dominates as it narrates the scenario. The booming sound that ac-
companies the Shape’s vision of a non-violent moral revolution is nothing but the
reverberating echo of her earlier command to “rise like lions after thunder” (l. 368
& l. 151 respectively). Her call, which she in a self-congratulatory and overopti-
mistic manner hails as “Oppression’s thundered doom,” is echoed by the multi-
tude, producing a deafening noise. Far from constituting an outright call for lower-
class violent revolution or at least an encouragement of their socio-revolutionary
impulses after Peterloo, the Shape’s amplified words actually aim to silence this
very demand. Instead they aim to replace it didactically – from a socially superior
perspective – with the concept of a moral revolution that the Shape puts forward.
Unlike in Carlile’s scenario, the oppressed masses remain voiceless, passive listeners
to the Shape’s monologue on how to best conduct a non-violent, moral revolution.
Their voice and perspective on how to achieve socio-political transformation are
withheld. At the same time, the masses are acknowledged as the decisive force in
the revolutionary process – “Ye are many, they are few”, as the Shape stresses at the
beginning and the end of her address (l. 156 & l. 372). For her, the masses are to
act as vital but voiceless extras in the attempt to achieve revolution through moral
force: “an unwarlike display of the irresistible number and union of the people,”
as Shelley proposes in PVR (1920, 89). In spite of all poem’s violently revolution-

28 Additionally, Shelley refers here to the image of the approaching revolution as an erupting vol-
cano; a frequent metaphor in Shelley’s poetry. For a discussion of the political and revolutionary
importance of the sublime volcanic images in Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound, see Duffy 2005,
176-184.
 125

ary imagery, we are presented instead with an essentially quietist, bourgeois view
which propagates idealist moral action instead of pragmatic physical action. The
Shape neither provides “a call to arms”, nor does she, “by staging another Peterloo,
which in turn will lead to revolution [, …] awaken England with the same lion
rousing cry to battle,” as Andrew M. Stauffer wants to believe (2005, 129 & 130).
On the contrary, she discourages any forceful socio-revolutionary action by the
masses.

2.3.2 “[T]heir yokes they’d break”: Blandford’s Call for Forceful Social Revolu-
tion in “A Real Dream: Or, Another Hint for Mr. Bull!!” (1819) and The
Mask of Anarchy

One of the most radical literary endorsements of socio-revolutionary action was al-
ready written before Peterloo: the poem “A Real Dream; Or, Another Hint for Mr.
Bull!!”, which appeared in The Medusa (9,1) on 17 April 1819. It was composed
by E.J. Blandford, “a down-at-heel hairdresser, poet and occasional printer with
Spencean sympathies” (McCalman 1988, 133). I contend that this propagandistic
poem constitutes a pivotal but largely neglected intertext to TMoA. Like the latter,
it begins as a dream vision: “Last night, when Somnus heavy hand had bound, /
With leaden chain, and link’d in sleep profound / The active functions of the wak-
ing mind […]” (Blandford 1819, 67). Unlike TMoA, however, the poem’s first
vision is not one of slaughter, class war and exploitation, but, on the contrary, a
Spencean agrarian paradise in which communal property provides an equal social-
material basis for all. Absolute socioeconomic equality is its governing principle, as
the sixfold repetition of the adjective “equal” in six consecutive lines in conjunc-
tion with the threefold anaphora “where” underlines:

[…] Where equal toil the fertile soil prepar’d,

And all the equal gain of produce shar’d;
Where old and young an equal balance held,
And each with fruits an equal measure fill’d;
Where each had equal space for his abode,
With nature’s equal laws their only code; […] (Blandford 1819, 67)

This utopian vision is diametrically opposed to the Shape’s horror vision of ex-
ploited labour in contemporary England, in which the “all things have a home but
one –/ Thou, oh, Englishman hast none” (ll. 203-204). Yet also in “A Real Dream”
126

this prospect of a communist paradise is immediately countered by a vista of the

contemporary socioeconomic status quo, in which the ruling minority exploits the
meek masses:

For here we find an idle few are fed,

To gluttony’s excess; – while lacking bread
The slavish million starve, and seem to fear,
Lest wolves and vultures their complaints should hear;
[…] Disgraceful to themselves, in mean submission,
They wear the galling yoke of imposition:
The pride of insolence they could suppress,
Yet take no measures to enforce redress! (Blandford 1819, 67 & 68)

In TMoA the complaints of the exploited are similarly feeble and counterproduc-
tive. As the Shape points out, “And at length when ye complain / With a murmur
weak and vain / ‘Tis to see the Tyrant’s crew / Ride over wives and you” (ll. 188-
191). Yet the speaker of “A Real Dream” castigates the masses much more severely
for their “apathy” (68). Moreover, in sharp contrast to the Shape, he wants to
goad them into forceful, revolutionary action. While one might dismiss the poem’s
rhetoric as anachronistic, as David Worrall does as “conventional late eighteenth-
century tropes of outrage” (Worrall 1992, 155), one has to at least acknowledge
that the speaker issues a much more unequivocal socio-revolutionary call to arms
than the Shape:

While I beheld this shameful degradation,

My quicken’d pulse beat high with indignation,
That such a grievous system should exist,
Of crying wrongs, and men not dare resist,
The murderous band of plunderers, who unite,
To war ‘gainst useful labour’s common right; –
“Rouse men,” cried I, “and for your freedom fight!” (Blandford 1819, 68)

Directed against the exploitative socioeconomic system, the speaker’s call to revo-
lutionary action is the opposite of the Shape’s call for passive resistance. Driven
by the same moral outrage against a “murderous,” “grievous system,” both voices
propagate different strategies of resistance: passive resistance (in the case of the
Shape), violent action (in the case of the speaker of “A Real Dream”).
This fundamental difference corresponds to a different relationship between the
poems’ voices. Besides the speaker, there is also a second voice in “A Real Dream”,
“Fancy”, who forms the counterpart to TMoA’s Shape. While not as prominent in
 127

the poem as the Shape in TMoA, this allegorical figure also intervenes at a crucial
point of the poem. It interrupts the speaker’s angry lament about the status quo,
triggered by a nightmare vision of the upper classes’ shameless and foolish display
of wealth and power. Similarly to TMoA’s initial allegorical masquerade, in which
“Fraud” (l. 15) and “Hypocrisy” (l. 24) act out their part, we also find “fraud and
falsehood” (68). More strongly however than in TMoA, in “A Real Dream” their
position in the class-based system of exploitation is highlighted: all are “mounted
on the stilts/ Of class, and rank; who rank enough are found, / For on corrup-
tion’s dung-hill they abound, / Well fed and fattened, – gross and overgrown /
With waste of fruits and viands not their own!” (68) While the image of ‘old cor-
ruption’ constitutes a conventional radical trope, the metaphor “stilts of class and
rank” points to the underlying socioeconomic system that props up these pathetic
figures, permitting them to live on the products of alienated labour. Just as the
speaker’s moral outrage threatens to overcome him – “O, monstrous guilt of blush-
less vice, cried I!” – Fancy intervenes. She utters the seemingly utopian wish that
the iron railings which protect the mansions of the rich from the potentially riot-
ous crowd could be provoked into revolutionary action:

Here Fancy cut me short with this reply.

“Could these dumb guards, while they these dens [of the rich] surround,
Be moved to action, and to sense of sound;
Could these dumb ranks of iron-railing speak
They’d from the stations start, – their yokes they’d break,
And cry aloud, that e’en the deaf might hear,
Quick let the PEOPLE for their RIGHTS prepare!
In FREEDOM’S CAUSE we deprecate delay,
When COURAGE shall command us, – we’ll obey!!!” (Blandford 1819, 68;
emphasis in text)

This visionary, revolutionary scenario, in which the dumb railings – as an allegory

of the apathetic masses, who protect their exploiters – find their own revolutionary
voice and are moved to action seems every bit as ‘fanciful’ as the Shape’s vision of a
moral revolution.29 In the poem’s final twist, however, the phantasmagorical vision
29 The socio-revolutionary scenario in Blandford’s “Real Dream,” of the iron railings becoming
alive, is however not as fanciful as it may seem. For instance, in the same section that reports on
the aftermath of Peterloo, on 1 October 1819 the New Monthly Magazine recounts that in Pais-
ley on 10 September a riot broke out the day after a peaceful mass meeting: “The Riot Act was
read three several times before nine o’clock. The cavalry were, at length, called out, and ordered
to clear the streets, which they proceeded to do without using their swords. The mob were not,
however, entirely passive. – They tore up the iron railings of the methodist chapel, and, armed
with the spikes, at one time actually charged the cavalry and the batonmen clearly up Story-
128

becomes reality, the eponymous “REAL DREAM” of the poem’s paradoxical title.
The masses turn out to be just waiting for the auspicious moment when their col-
lective indignation can be transformed into successful socio-revolutionary action:

The tongueless IRON then in accent steady,

Replied, “when wanted you shall find us ready!”
Here Fancy started at the sentence spoken,
And, by the shock, the cords of sleep were broken;
When lo! I found ‘twas real, – no mistake,
A REAL DREAM, – for I was wide awake! (Blandford 1819, 68)

As the voices become even more polyphonic (the Speaker, Fancy, the ‘imagined’
speech of the iron railings and their ‘real’ speech), the scenario shifts from dream
vision to ‘reality.’ Both the interactions between these voices and the relation be-
tween revolutionary vision and ‘reality’ are dialectic. This distinguishes “A Real
Dream” from TMoA, in which there is but a unidirectional relationship: the masses
echo the Shape’s call to passive resistance. As Anne Janowitz maintains:

[…] the speaker, at the end of the poem, finds that we had assumed (and
asserted) to be the work of Fancy within his own mind was in fact the light-
ning rod for an external collective will, of which he is a recipient. Yet it is the
outward press of his fancy into the milieu around him that precipitates that
collective volition.” (Janowitz 1998, 96)

While the Shape’s words are merely echoed by the masses – as a stand-in for in-
dependent revolutionary action - at the end of Blandford’s poem even the most
reified of the oppressed find their own revolutionary voice, in which they express
their readiness for forceful revolutionary action. Hence in “A Real Dream” finding
a revolutionary voice goes hand in with an affirmation of violent socio-revolu-
tionary action. Anne Janowitz’s assumption that “A Real Dream” “seems to be a
precursor to […] ‘The Mask of Anarchy’ as the exchange of singular and collective
voice motivates the movement of the poem” thus is astute (1998, 95). However, as
my comparative analysis has suggested, one must at the same time stress that both
poems not only stage a different relationship between these voices (the masses, the
speaker and “Fancy” or the Shape) but also differ fundamentally in their stance
towards lower-class socio-revolutionary violence.

street” (Anonymous 1819, 362). The practice of tearing up iron railings, which ironically were
erected to protect properties from the masses, and using them as makeshift weapons seems to go
at least as far back as the ‘Gordon Riots’ of 1780.
 129

As both comparisons of TMoA with Blandford’s poem and Carlile’s articles have
shown, Shelley’s moral revolution constitutes a theoretically and practically precari-
ous attempt to escape out of the following impasse: a decisive shift towards prole-
tarian social resistance and social revolution is counteracted by the fear that pro-
letarian violence might lead to class violence spinning even further out of control.
Unlike some contemporary, sub-bourgeois radical writers, he seems ultimately un-
able to accept the proletariat and its active physical power, its potential for revo-
lutionary violence, as a means of social transformation. However, even Carlile’s
much more unambiguous and pragmatic endorsement of physical force is still
characterised by a key ethical caveat. Violence is only permissible as a reaction to
violence, as a means of resistance. It is not permissible as a means for the masses to
achieve socio-political liberation by starting the revolution themselves. They have
to wait for concrete violent transgressions of their oppressor first before they are
allowed to resort to physical violence themselves. In this respect both Shelley’s and
Carlile’s conceptions of a ‘moral’ revolution differ considerably from Blandford’s
more radical scenario that allows for more than strictly defensive violence, regard-
ing revolutionary action as the answer to the continuous, entrenched socioeco-
nomic violence without any further violent provocation by the authorities. Bland-
ford’s outlook thus comes closer to Marx’s notion that socioeconomic oppression
is so totally inscribed into the everyday seemingly peaceful workings of bourgeois
capitalism that physical force of a revolutionary-united proletariat is the only way
to redress it. In the remainder of this chapter I will discuss how Shelley, in “Song
to the Men of England” (1819) (hereafter abbreviated as “SME”), moves consider-
ably closer to such a view of proletarian social revolution.

2.4 “Song to the Men of England” vs. The Mask of Anarchy: The Limits of
Moral Revolution and the Collapse of the ‘Moral Economy’

Shelley’s notion of moral revolution as the means to achieve fundamental socio-

economic change arises to a large degree out of the potent ideological conception
that moral imperatives should govern the socioeconomic relations between the
classes, the ‘moral economy’ of the poor. This seminal concept was first theorised
by E. P. Thompson for 18th-century Britain, although it reaches back much further
and was not limited to the British Isles.30 It is based on the assumption that there

30 For a brief survey of the history of the moral economy until 1815, see Claeys 1987a, 1-33. For
a concise summary of Thompson’s concept as well as subsequent elaborations and applications
130

was a popular consensus that demanded that economics be governed by essentially

moral principles. Thompson defines it as

[…] a consistent traditional view of social norms and obligations, of the

proper economic functions of several parties within the community, which,
taken together, can be said to constitute the moral economy of the poor. An
outrage to these moral assumptions, quite as much as actual deprivation,
was the usual occasion for direct action. (Thompson 1971, 79)

If the lower classes felt that these principles had been violated, they regarded it as
their moral right and duty to fix this imbalance through forms of popular pro-
test, including riots. Specific traditional notions of moral laws legitimised these
actions. These laws were believed to govern socioeconomic relations and transcend
specific class interests. Underneath the moral economy, Thompson argues, was a
passionate and strong belief in “notions of the common weal – notions which,
indeed, found some support in the paternalist tradition of the authorities” (1971,
79). Both under the impact of emerging industrial capitalism, which replaced the
“bread-nexus” as the decisive factor for lower-class standards of living with the
“cash-nexus” (79), and the parallel development of a “new political economy […]
disinfested of intrusive moral imperatives” (90), this ideology was coming under
increased pressure in the latter half of the 18th century. “The breakthrough of the
new political economy of the free market” marked the “breakdown of the old
moral economy” (136) and the ensuing change in their socioeconomic circum-
stances eradicated any lingering notions of a moral economy within the upper and
middle classes.31 However, “the moral economy of the crowd took longer to die,”
and was picked up by “some Owenite socialists,” E. P. Thompson insists (1971,
136).32 As Manfred Gailus has further emphasised, even in mid-19th-century Eu-
rope the moral economy of the poor still motivated the behaviour and actions of

to the German context and critical assessments of it, see Gailus 1990, 201-208.
31 E. P. Thompson identifies Adam Smith with his Wealth of Nations (1776) as one of the main
theoretical instigators of this decisive shift towards a market-driven capitalist economy (see
1971, 89). Both E. P. Thompson and Noel Thompson locate the final breakdown of the moral
economy as a principle that had some influence on the actual economic relations in Britain
within the period of the Napoleonic Wars, i.e. the years between 1803 and 1815, shortly before
Shelley’s texts in question here were written.
32 Noel Thompson goes even further when he sees a strong resurgence of this ideology in the
popular political economy of the 1820s and 1830s. This questions the common opinion among
scholars that by then the belief according to which “productive activity occurred within a frame-
work of fairness and justice, had already, in large part been dismantled before the cessation of
hostilities” during the Napoleonic Wars (1998, 37).
 131

the masses. This must be considered when investigating why socioeconomic suffer-
ing caused riot, rebellion, or even revolution in one region, whereas other regions
similarly affected remained calm: “Von grundlegender Erklärungskraft bleibt das
bei Thompson angelegte paternalistische Erklärungsmodell zwischen fürsorgepfli-
chtigen Obrigkeiten und Schutz und Versorgung beanspruchenden Volksmassen”
(Gailus 1991, 209).
Shelley’s concept of moral revolution is to a considerable degree based on such
ethical and paternalistic notions of relations between classes. If, with Raymond
Williams, one regards the moral economy as a ‘residual’ social practice and ideol-
ogy (an older ideological paradigm which is defunct in practice but still exercises
some lingering power on social beliefs) (see 2005, 40-42), its continuing influence
on contemporary radical ideology accounts for several of the contradictions in
TMoA’s scenario of moral revolution. If the Shape unconvincingly insists that parts
of the upper classes will “feel such compassion / For those who groan, and toil,
and wail” (ll. 288-289), and consequently will “make/ War for thy [i.e. the lower-
classes’] beloved sake/ On wealth, and war, and fraud” (ll. 250-252), then Shelley
relates to the paternalistic obligations of the rich under the moral economy to safe-
guard the welfare of the poor.33 Indeed, most of the seemingly contradictory and
perplexing advice that the Shape gives to the people – to trust that the bourgeois
yeomanry will be ashamed of the base massacre of the crowd and that the army will
side with the people, and even to insist that moral force will eventually triumph
over physical force – makes sense only when it is regarded as a manifestation of the
residual grip of the moral economy. The grand delusion behind the Shape’s idea
that a large, peaceful, and passively resistant mass assembly will eventually force
the authorities to grant the lower classes political and social rights finds its origin
in the moral economy’s key tenet that moral force will prevail. The imperative that
moral principles, instead of the crude right of might, ought to govern the relations
between the social classes constitutes an extension from the imperative that moral

33 Contemporary philanthropic projects, such as Robert Owen’s ‘model mill in New Lanark, may
also have been inspired by these paternalistic imperatives of the moral economy. However, the
Shape in her appeal to the upper-class “compassion” seems to think more of the old aristocracy
than bourgeois entrepreneurs such as Owen when she locates these friends of the people in “pal-
aces” rather than mansions (cf. ll. 283-290). Shelley scarcely refers to Owen’s projects through-
out his works, although he mentions him in an open letter to The Examiner (3 November
1819). Provocatively aligning him with two figures that formed the epitome of oppression for
contemporary British radical writers, Napoleon Bonaparte and Viscount Castlereagh, Shelley’s
stance towards “Mr Owen of Lanark” remains highly unclear (cf. 1964 II, 145). Owen, however
(at least according to Paul Foot), was a great admirer of Shelley: “his publications, most notably
the newspaper New Moral World of the late 1820s, bristle with Shelley quotations” (1980, 238).
132

principles ought to govern the economy, in particular labour relations. Unlike the
more realistic lower-class poet Blandford, who in his “Real Dream” indicts the
“black hearts” and the “blushless vice” of the “murderous band of plunderers”
(1819, 68), Shelley seems to believe that moral force, “an unwarlike display of the
irresistible number and union of the people” (1920, 89) and the appeal to the mor-
al conscience of the rich could sway their opinion and thus enforce social change.
These moralistic views are decisively revised in “SME,” a poem that underneath
its simple, broadside ballad-like form hides a considerable degree of socio-ideologi-
cal sophistication. With its rudimentary socio-revolutionary message, it decisively
transcends the ideological muddle that is apparent in TMoA. In striking contrast to
the Shape, the speaker of “SME” exhorts the labourers to forcefully resist the socio-
economic violence that the capitalist system inflicts on them and to change their
miserable situation themselves by resorting to revolutionary violence. He marries
this call with a proto-Marxist analysis of the exploitation and the alienation of
labour that is at least as radical as the Shape’s:

The seed you sow, another reaps;

The wealth ye find, another keeps;
The robes ye find, another wears;
The arms ye forge, another bears

VI

Sow seed, – but let not the tyrant reap;

Find wealth, – let no impostor heap;
Weave robes, – let not the idle wear;
Forge arms, – in your defence to bear. (ll. 16-24)

More lucidly and with less pathos than TMoA the total alienation of the produc-
ers from their products is exposed. In this system of “unequal distribution,” the
producers are bereft of “the product of their labour,” a fundamental contradiction,
since, as Shelley insists in PVR, “all property is the produce of labour” (1920, 50).34
However, the key difference between the two poems lies not primarily in their
economic analysis, but in their contrasting revolutionary ideology, primarily con-
cerning violence as a socio-revolutionary means and second, how to resolve the
34 As Scrivener suggests, Shelley’s use of the “labor theory of value” in his “analysis of estranged
labor” is not merely mirroring the agenda of contemporary political and social reformers. Scrive-
ner considers it as much more radical than “the moral outrage of Hunt and Owen” (1982, 233).
 133

socioeconomic class war. Instead of shying away – as the Shape does – from the
socio-revolutionary consequences that arise from such a sharp socioeconomic anal-
ysis of the capitalist process, the speaker of “SME” endorses violent revolutionary
action by the exploited, even if merely as a defence against exploitation: “Forge
arms – in your defence to bear.” Unlike TMoA, “SME” is devoid of the illusory
hope that the upper classes will be moved by lower-class moral force, as the moral
economy posits, and “those whose hereditary duty it is to lead them” (Shelley 1964
II, 136) act philanthropically living up to their paternalistic duties. Instead the
speaker urges the labourers to resort to physical force as the only way to counter
the violence intrinsic to the capitalist process of production. Similar to Carlile and
other ultra-radical voices, the speaker of “SME” judges the proletarian revolt to be
just and moral, because it is merely a defensive use of force. The rich have started
the class warfare by oppressing and exploiting the lower classes. Like Carlile, the
speaker of “SME” advises the proletarians to “bear arms in [their] defence.” Yet
in contrast to the former, the speaker identifies as their key opponent not the
yeomanry nor the regular army but the capitalist. Carlile argues that “an unarmed
people to be assailed by a brutal armed force” (1970 I, 35) legitimises physical
force used in defence. The speaker of “SME” argues that socioeconomic exploita-
tion and violence within the capitalist process of production legitimises this: “the
arms ye [i.e. the workers] forge – another wears.” What the speaker in effect envis-
ages as the aim of such a socioeconomic war of liberation is the annihilation of the
exploiters, the capitalists and not merely the yeomanry, a decisive shift towards a
proletarian social revolution.
A close investigation of the stanzas’ language reveals how the entire rhetoric is
geared towards the goal of the listeners gaining these socio-revolutionary insights.35
As the triple parallelism of the three phrases negating the existence of the exploiter
in the socioeconomic process of production drastically suggests (“no tyrant,” “no
impostor,” “not the idle”), the producers have actively and forcefully to remove the
exploiters from the socioeconomic equation. The capitalist to whom the indefinite
pronoun “another” refers and who stands between the labourer and the product
of his labour has to be rooted out. Syntactically, the subject of the capitalist (“an-
other”) violently separates the subjects that produce from the objects they pro-
duce. Shelley thus illustrates rhetorically how the forced alienation of the labourers
from their products allows the capitalist to profit from the labour of his workers.
While the labourers form the subjects to all the verbs of production (“sow,” “finds,”
“find,” and “forge”), the capitalists constitute the subjects to all the verbs denoting
35 For a discussion in how far Shelley’s 1819 poems constitute examples of ‘interventionist’ litera-
ture, see Janowitz 1994.
134

the use of the goods and products (“reaps,” keeps,” “wears,” and “bears”). It will
only be possible to remove the agency of the capitalist from the economic equa-
tion, the speaker insists, if the workers seize the arms that they produce. While
they now paradoxically produce the very tools – weapons – that their exploiters
need to oppress them, they are urged instead to forge them to serve their own
liberation. With the metre stressing the possessive pronoun “your,” they are being
told “to forge arms, – in your defence.” This positive command is strongly divided
from the preceding negative ones: “let no,” “let no,” and “let not.” As the speaker
implies, it is vital for the poor to take the war on wealth and exploitation into their
own hands and not to wait for the upper classes to be moved into action by the
poor sacrificing themselves in their act of passive resistance, “by that slaughter to
the nation” (l. 360) as the Shape insists. This is the decisive ideological difference
between the two poems that shows Shelley taking a major step towards proletarian
social revolution.
One might still argue from a Marxist materialist angle that “SME” falls victim
to the idealist fallacy that a change in consciousness is sufficient to enact a trans-
formation of material living conditions, an ideological trap in which Dawson sees
Shelley’s entire thinking caught up in (see 1991, 40-41). However, at least con-
cerning “SME,” such an allegation is largely unfounded because the poem posits
an immediate interconnection between acquiring a consciousness of the mecha-
nism of exploitation and subsequent socio-revolutionary action. For the speaker,
as for Marx, one cannot take place without the other: the proletarians’ adequate
awareness of their socioeconomic situation and the realisation of their inevitably
hostile relationship to the capitalist bourgeoisie constitutes the very precondition
for an active transformation of the material process of production to happen. To
remove the exploiter from the process of production, it is first necessary to realise
for the producers that their labour is exploited and the capitalist is the one who
profits from alienated labour. The only serious omission Shelley could be accused
of here is that the poem fails to depict how this transformation should concretely
come about. The revolutionary act of rising up against the exploiters and over-
throwing them remains a lacuna. It is merely typographically marked by the series
of dashes in Stanza 6. While the benefits of socioeconomic transformation are
being depicted, the lower-class socio-revolutionary violence needed to achieve this
is not. This omission again highlights Shelley’s disquiet about violence as a revo-
lutionary means, although in contrast to TMoA, he now condones it and even
implicitly calls for it. He then asserts that the contemporary process of production
has to be changed actively and by force, if proletarian alienation and suffering are
ever to be ended.
 135

This marks a major departure both from the moral economy and the concept of a
moral revolution as Shelley sketches it out in TMoA. In “SME” the trust in moral
force, upper-class paternalism, and scientific or theoretical progress that will ease
and alleviate their suffering – as the Shape in TMoA tells the proletarians – are
exposed as false hopes and as dangerous ideological delusions, as is the entire con-
cept of a peaceful moral revolution. This becomes obvious when considering the
intertextual dialogue that unfolds between the following stanzas of TMoA and
“SME”:

LXIII

“Science, Poetry, and Thought

Are thy [the people’s] lamp; they make the lot
Of the dwellers in a cot
So serene, they curse it not

LXIV

“Spirit, Patience, Gentleness

All that can adorn and bless
Art thou – let deeds, not words, express
Thine exceeding loveliness

LXV

“Let a great Assembly be

Of the fearless and the free
On some spot of English ground
Where the plains stretch wide around. (ll. 254-265)

VII

Shrink to your cellars, holes and cells;

In halls ye deck another dwells.
Why shake the chains ye wrought? Ye see
The steel ye tempered glance back on ye.
136
VIII

With plough and spade, and hoe and loom,

Trace your grave and build your tomb,
And weave your winding-sheet, till fair
England be your sepulchre. (ll. 24-32)

The two last stanzas of “SME” exactly juxtapose the TMoA’s optimistic conclud-
ing scenario that a vast assembly by the people of England will form the start-
ing point of a successful moral revolution with a scenario of continued – even
heightened – oppression. While in TMoA the place of the assembly, “the spot of
English ground,” will become the source of a spiritual, moral, and social rebirth
of England, in “SME” it turns it into a place of spiritual as well as literal death
for the masses who have failed to revolt. It is on this English earth on which the
exploited proletarian will forever “Trace [their] grave and build [their] tomb.” The
bitter irony here is that all the labourers are producing for themselves and not for
the capitalists through their exploited labour is an untimely death. They are not
only digging their own grave in the process of exploited labour, but also burying
the concept of a moral economy. They are erecting a “sepulchre” to “fair England,”
the mythical place of pre-industrial rural England where its laws were thought to
have governed a peaceful coexistence of the social orders; a problematic notion
deeply embedded in the contemporary radical discourse.36 While “SME” remains
ambivalent whether such an Arcadia could be regained – at least it does not explic-
itly preclude it – it is adamant that this can never be achieved by a moral revolution
as PVR and TMoA propose. By illustrating how deeply socioeconomic violence is
embedded in the capitalist process of production, “SME” extols the violent change
of the capitalist system as the primary goal of any revolution.
This revolutionary ideology can with some justification be regarded as proto-
Marxist. A close look at labour’s and the labourer’s role in the process of production
both exposes the illusions of a moral economy and furthermore reveals the brutal

36 This myth of fair old England as the rural Arcadia occurs frequently in contemporary discourse,
for instance in Blandford’s poem “A Real Dream,” which I have analysed earlier. William Cob-
bett refers to the myth frequently to highlight the state of the current socioeconomic crisis.
While today misery abounds, the “state of our great grandfathers and great grandmothers” was
decisively different. Not only did political justice prevail, but also this “country has been famed
in all ages […] for the happiness of its people; for the comfort they enjoyed; for the neatness and
the goodness of their dress; […] and for the excellence and plenty of their food” (1998 VIII,
487). Although less pronouncedly, Carlile voices a similar nostalgia for the past (see 1970 I, 5).
Both influentially and controversially, Donald H. Reiman has argued that Shelley – like Cob-
bett – must be regarded as an “agrarian reactionary” (2002).
 137

alienation of industrial capitalism. In this way the perspective taken in “SME” dif-
fers decisively from the contemporary analysis of liberal political economists such
as Ricardo and others, who emphasised the benefits of capitalism for the national
economy rather than looking at the process of production itself. As Marx claims,
the proponents of a market economy are careful to obscure this negative effect of
industrial capitalism by looking at the national economy instead:

Die Nationalökonomie verbirgt die Entfremdung in dem Wesen der Arbeit

dadurch, daß sie nicht das unmittelbare Verhältniß zwischen dem Arbeiter,
(der Arbeit) und der Production betrachtet. Allerdings. Die Arbeit producirt
Wunderwerke für d[en] Reichen, aber sie producirt Entblössung für d[en]
Arbeiter. Sie producirt Paläste, aber Höhlen für d[en] Arbeiter. Sie producirt
Schönheit, aber Verkrüppelung für d[en] Arbeiter. (MEGA II, 366; Marx’s
emphasis)

Similarly, in “SME” we find on the one hand the pitiful dwellings of the labourers,
“ cellars, holes and cells” and on the other hand the “halls” of the rich. Although
the workers construct these, “another” inhabits them. This disproportion between
the living conditions of the labouring producers and the idle consumers has its
roots in the alienation of proletarian labour. As Marx further argues, “das Verhält-
niß [des] Vermögenden zu den Gegenständen der Production” is a direct result,
“nur eine Consequenz,” of the alienated “Verhältniß des Arbeiters zu den Gegen-
ständen seiner Production” (cf. MEGA II, 366; Marx’s emphasis). Exactly the same
view is put forward by “SME” that illustrates how the ownership of the rich over
the labourers’ product stems directly from the alienated relationship of the work-
ers towards their product. It could even be argued that in these stanzas more core
proto-Marxist tenets are voiced. If the masses do not liberate themselves violently
from the socioeconomic enslavement in which the capitalist process of production
imprisons them, they will continue producing the very means for their oppression.
They will keep on constructing the halls and palaces of the rich, while – as both
Shelley and Marx point out – they will continue to eke out their existence in cellars
and holes. Repeating and extending the observations made in Stanza IV that “the
arms [they] forge – another bears,” the speaker further emphasises how “the chains
[they] wrought” and “the steel [they] tempered” are being used to bind and subdue
the labourers. Alienated from its producers, the product of their labours, the steel
of the weapons takes on a life of its own. As expressed in lines 27-28, they “see /
The steel [they] tempered glance back on” them. While their product is being per-
sonified, the producers are being dehumanised and reified through the capitalist
process of production. The steel not only looks at them but, worse still, “glance[s]
138

back” in the sense that it strikes back on its producers. Their alienated products
mirror their own alienation from the rest of humanity as well as from their human
essence which is shown to have its roots in the alienated process of production. The
loss of ownership over their products marks a fundamental loss of their humanity
a point that – as mentioned earlier – is also stressed in TMoA when the alienated
condition of labourers is thus referred to as them being “slaves in soul” and “All
that others make of them” (cf. ll. 184-187). The labourers lose not only the prod-
uct of their labour by dint of the alienated process of production, but even worse
they are being alienated from their human self. Industrial capitalism not merely
changes the material existence of the workers for the worse, but also threatens
their social identity. On top of material deprivation comes social deprivation. This
observation that the proletariat is alienated twice – from its products and from its
human social identity – is proto-Marxist as it ties in with Marx’s notion of ‘double’
alienation. Indeed here exists a conspicuous parallel to Marx’s claims about double
alienation that results from the capitalist mode of production. Marx insists that
the alienation of workers is not merely a result of the process of production, but
is already inscribed in the capitalist labour process itself. The alienation from their
products is merely the outward sign of the deeper alienation of the self enforced
by the capitalist process of production. Not only do proletarians have to renounce
ownership of their products, but also of themselves, of their human essence. By
producing goods, the worker unmakes his self instead of creating his self through
his labour. Alienated labour results in the ‘abrogation,’ the loss of ones self:

[…] die Entfremdung zeigt sich nicht nur im Resultat, sondern im Akt der
Produktion, innerhalb producirenden Thätigkeit selbst. Wie würde d[em] Ar-
beiter d[as] Product seiner Thätigkeit fremd gegenübertreten können, wenn
er im Akt der Production selbst sich nicht selbst entfremdete? Die Product
ist ja nur das Resumé d[er] Thätigkeit. Wenn also das Product der Arbeit die
Entäusserung ist, so muß die Production selbst die thätige Entäusserung,
die Entäusserung der Thätigkeit, der Thätigkeit der Entäusserung sein. In
der Entfremdung des Gegenstandes der Arbeit resumirt sich nur die Ent-
fremdung, die Entäusserung in der Thätigkeit der Arbeit selbst. (MEGA II,
367; Marx’s emphasis)

As discussed earlier (see chapter 1.3.5), this idea of double alienation, of a socio-
psychological pathology, lies at the root of Marx’s concept of social revolution.
He demands that in order for alienation to be reversed, and for the proletariat to
regain his identity as human, it has to violently transform both the oppressive class
structure and the socioeconomic relations of production. Such a socialist-humanist
 139

perspective also seems to guide Shelley’s analysis of labour. In “SME” it is also im-
plied that not only the agency of the exploiter (referred by the pronoun “another”)
must be eradicated but also that the mode of production with its intrinsic physical
and psychological violence must be fundamentally changed. If this is not achieved,
any further resistance will form simply another ultimately futile act of rebellion.
The speaker maintains this in his rhetorical question: “Why shake the chains ye
wrought?”
Much more starkly than TMoA, “SME” dismisses any notion of a purely politi-
cal revolution, and at the same time moves decisively towards a proletarian social
revolution. The results of a political change, it insists, will be continued bourgeois
oppression through the very products the labouring classes have manufactured.
Instead, the working classes have to break the capitalist cycle of production. Any
residual notion of fair trade and just industrial relations, in which the workers
have rights that are respected by the masters, is renounced as an ideological delu-
sion under the current system of production, a notion that was prevalent in the
traditional discourse. For instance a remonstrance, which was adopted in London
earlier and taken by Henry Hunt, the main speaker, to the meeting at St. Peter’s
Field in Manchester, the site of the Peterloo Massacre, demanded that:

[…] every industrious labourer, manufacturer and mechanic, has the right
to reap the ample and substantial fruits of his virtuous and USEFUL TOIL.
(Quoted in Belchem 1996, 45, emphasis in the original)

Here the reversal of the alienation of labour features as a demand among others. It
is not central as in “SME,” where the reversal of labour alienation is foregrounded
as being key to redress proletarian suffering. Michael Scrivener goes as far as to
maintain that one “will look in vain through the works of Cobbett or any other
radical author to find such an uncompromising view on labor alienation” as in
“SME” (1982, 232). While Scrivener’s assertion seems too sweeping, it is con-
spicuous that even a lower-class revolutionary activist such as Richard Carlile is still
nostalgically caught up in the notion of the moral economy of the pre-industrial
days when he blames a deliberate misgovernment of socioeconomic affairs for the
proletarian predicament and not the system per se:

‘Tis misrule – fatal misrule, that keeps the better half of thy children in a
state of wretchedness, and starvation, whilst the few squander thy produce.
When shall thy sons shake off that grovelling apathy, and awake to a sense of
their degradation? When shall they again reap that which they sow? (Carlile
1970 I, 5; my emphasis)
140

Here we find the radical nostalgia for a better England in which the alienation of
labour did not exist: the labourers reaped what they sowed. Yet in “SME” such a
residual, idealist notion of fairness in the contemporary industrial relations (cf. the
‘burial’ of “fair England”) has given way to a disillusioned analysis of the capital-
ist process of production from a materialist angle. Again striking a proto-Marxist
note, Shelley emphasises how – due to its alienated nature – their work, which the
labourers have to perform within the capitalist system of production, constitutes
an essentially sadomasochistic act. They sacrifice themselves for the ones who own
their labour and in this process commit self-sacrifice, in a similar way as Marx
depicts it:

Die äusserliche Arbeit, die Arbeit, in welcher der Mensch sich entäussert,
ist ein Akt der Selbstopferung, der Kasteiung. Endlich erscheint die [Äu]
sserlichkeit der Arbeit für den Arbeiter darin, daß sie nicht sein eigen ist,
sondern eines andern ist, daß sie ihm nicht gehört, daß er in ihr nicht sich
selbst, sondern einem andern angehört [...] so ist die Thätigkeit des Arbei-
ters nicht seine Selbsthätigkeit. Sie gehört einem andern, sie ist der Verlust
seiner selbst (MEGA II, 367)

When the speaker of “SME” addresses the labourers with a series of rhetorical
questions about the role they play in the capitalist process of production, he makes
it unmistakably clear that its very modus operandi is not only to deny the labourers
ownership of their products, but also of their work as such. Through the question
repeated four times in conjunction with verbs denoting labour, the speaker points
out how their forced labour, their “Zwangsarbeit” (MEGA II, 367), amounts to
self-sacrifice:

MEN of England, wherefore plough

For the lords who lay ye low?
Wherefore weave with toil and care
The rich robes your tyrants wear?

II

Wherefore feed, and clothe, and save,

From the cradle to the grave,
Those ungrateful drones who would
Drain your sweat – nay, drink your blood?
 141
III

Wherefore, Bees of England, forge

Many a weapon, chain, and scourge,
That these stingless drones may spoil
The forced produce of your toil? (ll. 1-12)

In “SME” a feeling of moral outrage, which is based on the ethical assumption

that the masters ought to take a certain responsibility for the material well-being
of their workers, is unmasked as a form of false consciousness that guarantees the
perpetuation of the present system of socioeconomic exploitation. If the proletar-
ians believe that under the present socioeconomic system the capitalists could ever
be anything other than idle “ungrateful” drones that live off the exploitation of the
labour of the poor, then they are deluded, the speaker implies in a series of rhetori-
cal questions in the first three stanzas of the poem. Like the drones in a colony of
bees, the capitalists can only fulfil an exploitative function in the capitalist socioe-
conomic system because the labourers, who are likened to worker bees, provide the
sustenance for the capitalists. This is the essence of the capitalist system of alienated
labour in which the workers are necessarily participating to survive under its terms.
It changes the capitalists from “stingless drones” into the powerful oppressors; the
scenario is practically as moral as the economy within a beehive.
The central imagery of these lines constitutes the comparison of the poor to
worker bees who have to provide for the drones – the rich – without receiving
anything in return. Not only is this allegory common throughout Shelley’s oeu-
vre,37 but it also forms a traditional image for socioeconomic exploitation that, as
Dawson has pointed out, stretches at least as far back as Thomas Paine (see 2005,
51). As Gardner illustrates in his contextualisation of “SME,” the contemporary
radical press also employed this image in the context of alienation of labour. For in-
stance, a pamphlet written by the ultra-radical shipwright and early trade unionist
John Gast, “An Address to the Mechanics and Labourers of the United Kingdom,
which was reprinted in The Medusa on 3 July 1819 (see Prothero 1979, 102) over
a month before the Peterloo Massacre, indicts in a slightly incongruous image the
evil influence of the “DRONES of SOCIETY” on the socioeconomic situation
of the working poor. The poor are made the “granary” from which the rich “draw
their succour and support (Gast 1819, 154).
However, unlike these uses, in the “SME” this image is further radicalised and
placed into a strong socio-revolutionary context, as it is merged with a metaphor
37 Foot illustrates how this allegory for exploitation can be found in much of Shelley’s later work
from Queen Mab and Swellfoot the Tyrant to his drama fragment Charles I (See 1980, 85-87).
142

that compares the capitalists to bloodsucking leeches.38 The capitalist system not
only permits the capitalists to exist as idle drones that live off the workers’ toil, but
the imperative to maximise profit at all costs also turns the capitalists into lethal
parasites. In comparison with TMoA, where the image of capitalist as parasites is
also evoked, the immediate connection of this practice to the economic system is
far more strongly evoked. In stark contrast to TMoA, however, “SME” suggests
that both parasitic capitalists must be shaken off violently and capitalism be de-
stroyed if the labourers are ever to enjoy the fruit of their labours.
Such socio-revolutionary fervour is rare in contemporary discourse as is the
image of capitalists as leeches. Two years later in 1821 the cooperative journal The
Economist, founded by Robert Owen, could be said to employ a somewhat com-
parable rhetoric when it implies that capitalism does not shy away from trading in
human blood, if this augments profit. Comparing the system to slavery, it alleges
that “Capital […] will traffic even in blood and slavery of human victims, furnished
by a whole quarter of the globe for its unrighteous increase, and not for the good
of humanity or society” (Anonymous 1821, 160). However, the allegations made
here against capital are not nearly as drastic as those raised in “SME” (as they also
seem to refer to the slave trade which had been abolished by Britain in 1807). Cru-
cially, they do not attack the capitalists ad hominem, a moderate socialist tendency
that, according to Noel Thompson, is characteristic of the entire cooperative press
(see 1994, 123). Furthermore by accusing capital of an “unrighteous increase,” the
writer implies that there must exist such a thing as a ‘righteous’ increase.
To sum up, in contrast to TMoA, “SME” not merely stages the collapse of the
ideology of a moral economy, but also unmasks how the latter impedes the emer-
gence of an advanced critique of industrial capitalism, not to mention the develop-
ment of socio-revolutionary concepts.

38 In another of his 1819 poems, the sonnet “England in 1819,” Shelley also employs the image
of the people’s oppressors as leeches. However, in contrast to “SME,” it is not used to depict
the socioeconomic but the political elite whose reckless oppression is regarded as self-defeating:
“Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know, / But leech-like to their fainting country cling, / Till
they drop, blind in blood, without a blow, –” (ll. 4-6).
 143

2.5 “We Have Eaten From the Tree of Knowledge”: Emerging Proletarian
Consciousness and the Bourgeois Didactics of Revolution

In the previous section I have demonstrated how the “SME” takes the socio-revo-
lutionary impetus, which arises from a radical analysis of alienation in the capital
process of production, further than some contemporary texts. However, it would
be wrong to maintain that “SME” was unique at this time, since some examples
exist in contemporary radical discourse that leave – to a decisive degree – the
framework of the moral economy behind and move considerably towards prole-
tarian social revolution. One very striking example is the pamphlet Address of the
Reformers of Fawdon to their Brothers the Pitmen, Keelmen and other Labourers on
the Tyne and Wear (1819), in which Gardner locates a “proto-Marxist” awareness
(cf. 2002, 46).39 In contrast to “SME,” where an upper-class speaker addresses the
lower classes and didactically tries to engender an awareness of their situation, in
the pamphlet we find the beginnings of a genuine working-class consciousness.
This is rhetorically reflected in the frequent use of the first person plural when
discussing the workers’ situation. This contrasts starkly with the speaker relating
the labourers’ plight to them in the second person plural in “SME.” Instead of tell-
ing “ye” what to think of themselves and how to act, the pamphlet propagates a
‘we-consciousness’ and critical, independent working-class reflection of their state.
Strongly dismissing the patronising attempts of bourgeois writers to tell them what
to think and what to do, to “trifle with [them] as children,” the working-class
authors assert their ability to become conscious of their situation without upper-
class interference. Attacking bourgeois prejudice concerning their inferior intellec-
tual powers, they self-confidently state in the pamphlet’s opening paragraph that
as even as “poor working-people” they are well able to think independently. The
negative image “SME” and TMoA in particular depict, of the proletarian masses as
largely passive and dehumanised victims of exploitation, as ‘slaves,’ is replaced by a
decidedly more positive self-image. Instead of portraying the proletarians in need
of bourgeois enlightenment, the pamphlet sees the workers as producers of their
own class-consciousness. Alluding to the biblical image of the forbidden tree, they
declare in a forceful and plain language that they have transgressed the limitations
imposed by the upper classes on lower-class critical thought:

39 The keelmen were boatsmen loading coal unto barges on the River Tyne which were called
‘keels.’ The keelmen then rowed these barges to the larger ships carrying coals and transferred
their freight to them. Comparatively well-paid, they formed a self-confident and tightly organ-
ised elite among the Tyneside workers. In September 1819 they went on strike for 24 days (see
Sunniside Local History Society).
144
ALTHOUGH we are not so well able to express our sentiments as to think,
yet the great quantity of low, stupid, stuff that has lately been addressed
to us, and other poor working people, provokes us to speak. The writers
of these things have decency enough to conceal their names, but we are
pretty sure they are written by some well fed, pampered placemen, or silly
rich fool, who fares sumptuously ever, and neither knows nor cares for the
wrongs or sufferings of the poor. Aye, these miserable drivellers may skulk
in secret, and, in the brutality of their folly, trifle with us as children, or
insult us as slaves; but we have eaten of the tree of knowledge, and are able
to discern good from evil. (Reformers of Fawdon 1969, 3)

While still arguing from a moral basis that there exist rights and wrongs in socio-
economic practice, the authors at the same time acknowledge that in contempo-
rary reality a socioeconomic war of the rich against the poor is unfolding in which
those moral imperatives no longer apply. To be more precise, they are turning the
bourgeois accusations on their head that the poor lack any moral sense and solely
aim to loot and rob the possessions of the rich. Instead, they assert, the rich are the
ones who recklessly and without any ethical consideration despoil the poor. The
class war that is enfolding is not solely a war of words fought on the level of ideol-
ogy, but is rooted in a physical and material struggle of the rich against the poor:

You all know that our oppressors and their humble tools, who can tag a few
words together, agree in abusing us, and in repeating over and over that the
present dispute is between those who have property and those who want to
plunder them; and this wicked lie is told so often that, that we verily believe
some silly old women, and a few wealthy numbsculls begin to think it is
partly true. But the cunning, bad people who spread abroad this falsehood
know full well that it is a struggle betwixt what is right and what is wrong;
betwixt a starving people, and a few shameful, hard-hearted Diveses [i.e.
rich men], who first plunder us, without right or reason, and then, when we
complain, send in the military, either to murder us or to awe us into slavery.
(Reformers of Fawdon 1969, 3)

This passage posits a similar link between socioeconomic and political oppression
to that found in “SME.” In both texts there exists a comparable realisation of
the intimate interconnection of political and economic oppression, political and
socioeconomic violence. The Reformers regard the military oppression as a mani-
festation of the ruling classes’ attempt to keep up the system of socioeconomic
 145

exploitation, the violence of which forms the source of this class war;40 first the rich
“plunder” the poor, and if the latter protest against their exploitation, the rich then
“send in the military” either to massacre them (as the recent Peterloo Massacre had
demonstrated) or to coax them back into the stolid acceptance of socioeconomic
oppression, of ‘slavery.’
Even more strongly than “SME” – and for that matter TMoA – the pamphlet
exposes that contemporary society is defined by class war. Since the rich are seen
to be waging war on the poor, they are strongly accused of being the aggressors
in this class confrontation. As in “SME,” the combined violence of upper-class
exploitation and military oppression give the lower classes the right to revolt as an
act of self-defence:

The bloated tax-eaters accuse us of conspiring. Now, the rich keep fire arms
in their houses – they are now training their tenants and servants in their
Halls and Parks – their obsequious dependants are members of Yeomanry
Corps – they possess unbounded property and influence – they are continu-
ally meeting and plotting to withhold our rights; they have a standing army
at their call (at least they think it is at their call) – while were we, who with
difficulty can purchase a dinner, to get arms for our own defence, and to
attempt to learn how to use them, we would be called daring, rebellious
rascals. – Magistrates would threaten us with temporal punishment; and
their pliable friends. Yet after all, who are the real conspirators? Is it not
the rich that are conspiring against the unprotected poor? (Reformers of
Fawdon 1969, 7)

Cleverly, the authors turn the accusations that are being used by the bourgeoisie
and the government to criminalise the lower classes against them. Not the protest-
ing and armed poor but the rich are “the real conspirators,” as the “Manchester
massacre” (5) has most clearly revealed. The daily socioeconomic violence that this
system enacts on the poor when their wages hardly suffice to buy them their meals
justifies violent unified working-class action against the bourgeoisie. Capitalism
in itself, it is implied, has to be regarded as a clandestine conspiracy of the rich
against the poor. In embracing socio-revolutionary violence, the authors of the
pamphlet adopt a stance that is diametrically opposed to the Shape’s categorical
denouncement of lower-class violence. By contrast, with their suggestion “to get

40 This insight almost transcends the label ‘proto-Marxist’ since it anticipates – albeit in less theo-
retical language – Marx and Engels’ key claim from Das Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei
that “die politische Gewalt im eigentlichen Sinne ist die organisierte Gewalt einer Klasse zur
Unterdrückung einer andern” (MEW IV, 482).
146

arms for [their] own defence” they not only echo the call of the speaker of “SME”
to “Forge arms – in [their] defence, but also those of various contemporary radicals
and ultra-radicals (Richard Carlile, Thomas Davison, Robert Wedderburn, etc.)
who called for defensive arming.41 Also a comparable notion of a “Criminal Con-
spiracy” of the European rulers against the poor can be found with Carlile, who
subsequently (as pointed out earlier) advises his readers to start an “open […]
conspiracy” against them “to effect by force what you find unattainable by milder
means” (1970 I, 34).
Significantly, the passage above displays not only an acute awareness that the
political and military power of the rich is connected to “their unbounded capital,”
but also that the ongoing violent class confrontation is founded on an underlying
socioeconomic warfare. This consciousness is expressed in extremely lucid terms in
the paragraph immediately preceding the passage quoted above:

Is it nothing that we are deprived of more than half the fruits of our labour?
And must we, like stupid, blind gin-horses, move on and never complain?
No, no – we will not be cheated out of our reason. We see now why the
hardest working people on earth, inhabiting a fine country, blessed with
the most abundant harvests, and possessing the most wonderful machinery,
are still growing poorer and poorer. It is because there are so many greedy
drones in the hive who eat up all the honey. (Reformers of Fawdon 1969,
7)

The authors here employ – like the speaker of “SME” and other radical voices –
the trope of the idle drones that spoil the products of the workers’ toil to generate
a potentially socio-revolutionary concept. They state that it is the existence of too
many profit-hungry capitalists (“greedy drones”) that devour the entirety of the
labourer’s products (“all the honey”). Hence they imply that their number has to be
reduced and, if necessary, by force. Ironically it seems, at least some of the British
labourers and workers already display the socio-revolutionary consciousness that
the speaker of Shelley’s poem patronisingly aims to drum into his imagined lower-
class audience. Solely by the powers of their own reasoning, the authors claim, they
have liberated themselves from ideological delusions. Rather than meekly and un-
consciously putting up with the socioeconomic system that oppresses them, they

41 The call in the pamphlet might also allude to concrete historical events. According to E. P.
Thompson, in particular in Newcastle (where the pamphlet was printed) and the surround-
ing area the “pitmen and forgemen” began to arm in turn “to counter the threat of an ‘Armed
Association’” formed by Newcastle loyalists, leading to “the preliminaries of civil war” (1980,
758-759).
 147

will resist and fight it, they declare. While it deprives them both of the goods they
produced and the surplus value of their labour,42 they “will not be cheated out of
their reason.” Neither will they be deterred by any ideological or physical pressure
from inquiring further and deeper into the causes for their socioeconomic situa-
tion and taking the necessary – potentially forceful – steps. The authors declare
that they will resist the potential stultification and dehumanisation their alienated
labour might cause (and which TMoA and “SME” so drastically depict) and in-
stead will become conscious of the mechanisms that govern the capitalist labour re-
lations. This conviction is expressed by the authors’ refusal to remain in an animal-
like condition, to be “stupid, blind gin-horses” (i.e. horses that were used to drive a
mill or other machinery) which “move on and never complain.” Instead of meekly
contributing to the continuation of the system of exploitation, by moving sense-
lessly round in circles without any awareness of their condition like these animals,
by becoming in effect a dehumanised extension of the machine, “ein bloßes Zube-
hör der Maschine” (MEW IV, 468), they assert the determination to defend and
reclaim their full humanity. This is the “moral revolution” (cf. 1969, 8) they aim
to achieve. As it includes the possibility of transforming the socioeconomic system
by force and further involves proletarian self-education (which aims to acquire an
authentic proletarian self-consciousness without bourgeois interference), it differs
considerably from both TMoA’s concept of moral revolution and “SME’s” attempt
to procure a proletarian social revolution from above.43 It is for the sake of their

42 This realisation that the capitalists increase their profit through the surplus value of their work-
er’s labour is articulated in the following statement: “The work of a man is always worth his
wages, and a little more, otherwise he would not be employed” (Reformers of Fawdon, 1969, 6).
Nevertheless, they also realise, that as wage labourers they occupy a central place in the process
of production, for otherwise the capitalists would simply use unpaid forced labour, as it is the
case with the “negro slave” (6).
43 At first glance, the final sections of the pamphlet seem again to withdraw from the radical con-
sequences of this socio-revolutionary consciousness. The author’s claim that they are campaign-
ing for “a moral Revolution,” for “Reform – with a view to prevent Revolution” (Reformers of
Fawdon 1969, 8; their emphasis) seems to contradict sharply their earlier militant sentiments.
However, as they at the same time embrace what are seen as the beneficial results of the bloody
French Revolution for the socioeconomic condition of the lower classes – “the condition of
the people of France, at present [is] indeed greatly superior to that of the people of England”
(8) – it becomes evident that the apparent denouncement of violence represents a tactical ma-
noeuvre. The strategy first to call for armed uprising and then again discourage it is repeatedly
employed throughout the text. Its aim seems to provide for a defence in case charges of sedition
and high treason are brought against the authors and the printer of the pamphlet. Moreover,
the authors also want to warn their readership of government-paid agent provocateurs: “If men
come amongst you, and urge you to commit any foolish, or rash act, be sure they are enemies –
BEWARE OF THEM! (8)
148

social self-liberation that they will continue to “read or talk about politics” in spite
of all the intimidations and threats from the capitalists (cf. 1969, 6). As they assert
they no longer need the leadership of radical politicians, orators and journalists but
will instead independently inquire into social “principles”:

People have had enough of leaders; they now look up to principles, and
will neither follow [the radical MP] Burdett, nor Cobbett, nor Wooler [edi-
tor of the radical journal The Black Dwarf], nor Hunt, nor any body else
any further, than these men seem to follow the public good. (Reformers of
Fawdon, 5)

This self-fashioning of the proletarians as self-confident, strong, and determined,

in spite of all their socioeconomic hardship, illuminates a key aspect that prevents
Shelley’s 1819 poems from embracing the proletariat as the force that will bring
about revolutionary – and ultimately socio-revolutionary – change: a depiction
as a class that is so downtrodden, so dispirited and degraded that they form the
epitome of human misery. Shelley is caught up in a bourgeois monologue about
the proletarian condition and social revolution, as the monologue structure of
both TMoA and “SME” conspicuously illustrates. A proletarian voice is lacking as
is the emerging proletarian discourse on social revolution. However, I would argue
that such a dialogue between a bourgeois and proletarian concept of revolution
formed the prerequisite for a further decisive shift of the avant-garde bourgeois
author moving further towards social revolution. This dialogue did not take place
in the case of Shelley or for that matter with any English bourgeois author of the
1810s. As the next chapter will illustrate, it was only starting to happen in the
1830s between German early proletarian and artisan associations and revolution-
ary authors that engaged with them.
3. The Social Turn in Revolutionary Ideology during the 1830s
and early 1840s: Heine, Börne, Beddoes, and Büchner

3.1 The Socio-Historical Background and Revolutionary Ideology

in 1830s Europe

Unlike in the 1810s in Britain, when the move towards socio-revolutionary ideol-
ogy was still haphazard, the 1830s in Europe witnessed a sustained and conscious
ideological shift in the discourse of the revolutionary avant-garde: away from po-
litical and towards social revolution. As Eric Hobsbawm and others have argued,
the “emergence of the new social-revolutionary trend” (1977, 149) could be ob-
served across nearly all of Europe (see 1977, 148-163). He claims further that for
the bourgeois revolutionaries the question of whether they were prepared to press
for further fundamental change “at the price of a social revolution” introduced a
decisive “split in their ranks” (1977, 151). This paradigm shift from political to
social revolution was triggered by at least three key developments that were closely
interrelated: the gathering momentum of industrialisation across most of Western
and Middle Europe and the ensuing social crises such as unemployment, pau-
perisation and proletarianisation, the failure of the liberal Revolutions of 1830 to
combat these socioeconomic problems, and finally the rise of the European work-
ers’ movements. Summing up the impact of the Revolutions of 1830, which took
place in France and some other European countries (such as Belgium and Switzer-
land), on the left-wing revolutionary discourse, Clive H. Church observes a novel
“insistence on bringing a social dimension into any future revolution” (1983, 184).
Moreover, Kurt Holzapfel in his assessment of the influence of these revolutions
on Europe links the 1830s revolution directly to the rise of the European workers’
movement. He claims that the July Revolution of 1830, and – closely linked with
it – the quashed workers’ rebellions in Lyon in 1831 and 1834, opened “die Epo-
che der sozialen Massenkämpfe des 19. Jahrhunderts und des Aufschwungs der
internationalen Arbeiterbewegung” (1988, 177).
150

The birthplace of the early socialist and communist revolutionary movements and
theories was France.1 Among the former featured most notably the conspirato-
rial faction of the socio-revolutionary Neo-Babouvists, who took their name from
one of first proto-socialist revolutionaries of the French Revolution, François-Noël
(‘Gracchus’) Babeuf (1760-1797). Not only was he one of the first to develop
the concept of social revolution,2 but he also tried to implement his demands
in the failed coup ‘La conspiration pour l’égalité’ (1796).3 The Neo-Babouvists
were led by his surviving fellow conspirator Filippo Buonarroti (1761-1837) and,
most importantly, by Louis-Auguste Blanqui (1805-1881).4 Paris also formed the
cradle for the German early workers’ and socialist movement, which in turn was
influenced by the ideologies of the early French socialists.5 Indeed the most radical
1 The majority of the early French socialists (e.g. Saint-Simonists, Fourierists, etc.) did not propa-
gate a revolutionary ideology, but campaigned for peaceful social change. They formed “die
friedliebende Schar der neuen Sozialisten,” as a contemporary German commentator remarked
in 1839 (Quoted in Schieder 1984, 947). However, their tenet of a peaceful societal change
found little echo among the writers discussed in this study. Even Heine advocated revolution
rather than reform, although he was was highly influenced by the ideology of the Saint-Simon-
ists, as numerous critics have shown. For the history of the terms ‘socialism’ and ‘communism’
and their heterogeneous meanings, see Schieder 1984. Lorenz Stein in his seminal study Der
Socialismus und Communismus des heutigen Frankreichs (1842) identified the stance towards pro-
letarian revolution as the distinguishing feature between socialism and communism: “der So-
cialismus ist positiv, der Communismus negativ; jener will eine neue Gesellschaft bilden, dieser
nur die bestehende umstürzen; [...] jener hofft auf seine Verwirklichung durch die Gewalt der
Wahrheiten, die er aufstellt und zu deren Betrachtung er jeden Denkenden einladen möchte,
dieser durch die Gewalt der Masse, ja durch Revolution und Verbrechen” (1842, 131). For a
discussion of the problematic nature of these two terms, see for instance Bouvier 1986, 265-
278. For a study-cum-anthology of seminal texts by the early French socialists, see Höppner &
Seidel-Höppner 1975. For an anthology that includes texts by French, British, and German
early socialists from 1789 until 1848, see Vester 1971.
2 Walter Euchner credits Babeuf with having initiated the “kommunistisch-revolutionäre Wende
in den gesellschaftspolitischen Auseinandersetzungen der Französischen Revolution” (2000,
27). For a study in English that investigates Babeuf ’s revolutionary theory and practice as well
as his afterlife, see Birchall 1997.
3 For an analysis of this event and his writings from a socialist point of view, see for instance
Höppner & Seidel-Höppner 1975 I, 74-95. They also give a selection of Babeuf ’s (1975 II, 53-
84) and Buonarroti’s writings (86-111) in German translation.
4 Louis-Auguste Blanqui was a professional revolutionary who was involved in all the important
revolutionary and insurrectionary attempts in Paris from 1830 to the Commune in 1871, in
spite of spending over 37 years of his life in prison. For a classic socialist biography of Blanqui,
see Bernstein 1971.
5 See for instance Bouvier 1986, Seidel-Höppner 2000 and Schieder 1963. Samuel Bernstein
even goes as far as to claim that in the German artisan ‘Bund der Gerechten,’ founded in 1838,
“[v]irtually every French socialist belief had its expounders” (1971, 80).
 151

factions among the German organised workers and artisans adhered closely to the
insurrectionist doctrines of the Neo-Babouvists.6 As this chapter will show, these
two groups and their socio-revolutionary ideology exerted a significant influence
on leftist German bourgeois authors, which accelerated their move towards social
revolution.
This chapter will deal comparatively little with British authors and the Brit-
ish context since, in contrast to the German radical discourse, the British did not
experience such a pronounced shift towards social revolution during the 1830s
and early 1840s. Although both countries witnessed a comparable and consider-
able increase in socio-revolutionary tensions in the years from 1830 to 1832, these
did not result in revolution, neither in Britain7 nor in Germany.8 In contrast to
Germany, however, in Britain these events did not even translate into the sustained
6 See Ruckhäberle 1977, 40-60. Bernstein states that Thomas Schuster and his friends in the
‘Bund der Gerechten’ adhered to “Buonarroti’s body of principles” (1971, 81), a point qualified
by Ruckhäberle who states that while it was heavily influenced ideologically by Buonarroti, it
adopted a democratic rather than a hierarchical organisation that characterised the latter’s se-
cret revolutionary societies (1977, 19). Members of the federation such as Karl Schapper were
involved in the attempted coup of 12 May 1839 that was organised by Blanqui and his secret
associations.
7 Hobsbawm goes as far as to identify the period of 1831-2 as the only time in British 19th-
century history when there was genuine potential for a revolution (1977, 140). E.P. Thompson
asserts that in “the autumn of 1831 […] Britain was within an ace of revolution, which, once
commenced, might well […] have prefigured, in its rapid radicalization the revolutions of 1848
and the Paris Commune” (1980, 898-899). Numerous riots, socioeconomic protests, and at-
tempted insurrections took place during these years that included the so called ‘Swing Riots’ in
1830 (see e.g. Hobsbawm & Rudé 1985) and the ‘Bristol Riots’ (see Royle 2000, 67-91). The
latter riots, which lasted for three days (29-31 October 1831), saw lower-class violence directed
against government institutions as well as against private property including warehouses. Royle
calls them “the worst urban disorder” in Britain for over fifty years (2000, 73). Addressing the
apparent paradox between widespread unrest and the lack of revolution, he tries to explain it by
referring to Britain’s special status and mentality. He concludes that in Britain during 1830-32
there “was clearly a revolutionary situation […]: one which in France would have led to revolu-
tion” (2000, 88).
8 Similarly, from August 1830 until 1832 there was widespread unrest throughout the German
States. Brunswick, Saxony, Hanover, and Hesse formed the epicentres of the revolts that often
took on pronouncedly socio-revolutionary dimensions. In Brunswick, Leipzig, and Dresden
only the formation of bourgeois citizen’s guards prevented further escalation of the situation,
at the cost of further increasing the tension between the bourgeoisie and the lower classes. In
Leipzig and Dresden (as well as in Aachen) proletarians directed their anger against bourgeois
property, destroying several mansions (see for instance Hardtwig 1998, 54). For studies of the
increased political and social protest in Germany during these years, see for instance Fenske
1986 and Volkmann 1984. Wolfgang Hardtwig lists a total of 136 instances in the years from
1830 to 1839 compared to 29 from 1816 to 1829. Even more significant is the rise in, what he
152

development of a socio-revolutionary ideology. This can be partly explained by the

long anticipated British Reform Bill in 1832. Paradoxically, it defused the socio-
revolutionary potential, even though this piece of legislation merely enfranchised
parts of the middle classes and thus led to bitter disappointment among the work-
ing classes. This feeling of betrayal was even exacerbated by the passing of the
‘Poor Law Amendment Act’ in 1835. Drastically cutting the amount spent on
supporting the poor and introducing a network of workhouses where the paupers
had to perform hard – often senseless – labour, this act further heightened class
hostilities, in particular between the middle and lower classes. As Eric Hobsbawm
maintains, this bill

[…] created more embittered unhappiness than any other statute of modern
British history, even though the revolt of the not entirely helpless workers
prevented its full application (no relief outside the workhouse, separation
of families within it, and so on) in the industrial north. (Hobsbawm 1999,
208)9

Tellingly, the hated workhouses were often referred to as ‘Bastilles.’ Thus evok-
ing the potent symbol of both the ruthless tyranny of the ancien régime and its
overthrow in the French Revolution, the anger towards the workhouses and the
new Poor Law, which erupted in some riots in Lancashire textile towns such as
Preston and Stockport at the end of the 1830s, was a symptom of the heightening,
potentially even socio-revolutionary, class tensions.10 Nevertheless the Reform Bill
reaffirmed a certain belief in the possibility of reform, both political and social,
which partly explains why the ensuing wave of working-class agitation focused pre-
dominantly on universal suffrage and workers’ rights rather than revolution. Even
terms, socioeconomic protest: from 3 cases between 1816 and 1829 to 28 cases between 1830
to 1839 (1998, 248).
9 The outrage of the poor at this law can also be traced in working-class literature. For instance
an anonymous ballad “A Dialogue and Song on the Starvation Poor Law Bill, between Tom and
Ben” reflects working class-anger at the act. Nostalgically contrasting the present hostile class
relations with a past patriarchal relationship of the rich towards the poor, the ballad expresses the
utopian wish that these supposedly amicable class relations may return: “Now for you to con-
clude these few lines which I’ve penned / May the rich to the poor man still yet prove a friend;
/ The new Poor Law Bill, let it be cast away, / Abolished from England for ever I say” (Palmer
1974, 261).
10 There were further revolts in Wales and Yorkshire in 1839, with the ‘Newport Rising’ in Wales
in November pursuing clearly revolutionary goals (see Royle 2000, 104-112). For an elegy for
one of the rebels killed at Newport, see “Lines on Shell, killed at Newport” by John Watkins. As
Watkins claims, Shell “died a martyr for the Charter” (in Kovalev 1956, 82). For an investiga-
tion of the engagement with the ‘Newport Rising’ in Chartist poetry, see Sanders 2009, 87-128.
 153

the mass movement of Chartism, which had the strongest proletarian grass-root
basis of any contemporary European workers’ movement, mainly campaigned for
socioeconomic liberation of the lower classes through attaining political emancipa-
tion. The nationwide movement of Chartism developed in the late 1830s out of
the remnants of the old reform movements. It takes its name from ‘The People’s
Charter’ (1838), whose six points demanded universal suffrage, annual parliaments
and thus the establishment of a truly democratic system which would guarantee
the political and social rights of the working classes.11 Its main faction aimed to
achieve these goals peacefully, through ‘moral force’ through petitions, campaigns,
strikes, mass gathering (the so-called ‘monster meetings’), etc. A minority among
its leaders, the ‘physical force’ Chartists, believed in the socio-political emancipa-
tion of the lower classes through revolutionary violence. While, as Alex Wilson
claims, only “a relatively small proportion of the leaders of the movement” be-
longed to this group, a “very substantial proportion of the rank and file” of the
Chartist movement endorsed the physical force school, which based its revolution-
ary ideology on the conviction that there “was an irreconcilable conflict of interest
between the middle and working classes” (1970, 119). As Dieter Langewiesche
further emphasises, Chartism largely held the belief that “soziale Verbesserungen
nur über verbesserte politische Rechte zu erreichen seien” (1985, 148).12 Only
on its most radical fringes did a socio-revolutionary message emerge,13 whereas

11 For historical introductions to Chartism see e.g. Royle 1996, Brown 1998, Walton 1999 and
Chase 2007.
12 Hobsbawm similarly foregrounds what he identifies as the mainly political character of Chartism
when he argues that the programme of the ‘Six Points’ of the ‘People’s Charter’ was essentially
“no different from the ‘Jacobinism’ of Paine’s generation” (1977, 144). However, in contrast to
Paine’s insistence on political revolution as the means to achieve social change, Chartism largely
campaigned for reform. In particular, the mainstream of the Chartist movement maintained
that an electoral reform that would introduce general suffrage would automatically achieve a
decisive improvement in the social situation of the lower classes. There exists an ongoing debate
among historians whether Chartism constituted a mainly political movement with a mass lower-
class basis or a proletarian class movement calling for socioeconomic change. Gareth Stedman
Jones has influentially argued that ideologically it did not go much beyond the “central tenet
of radicalism – the attribution of evil and misery to a political source” (1982, 14). By contrast,
Gregory Claeys maintains that “some of its leaders had a new, sophisticated critique of political
economy in which the manufacturing middle classes were identified as the opponents of the
working classes” (1987b, 18). For a survey of this controversy, see Brown 1998, 6-9.
13 For instance, Julian Harney, in an article in The London Democrat in 1839, clearly employs
socio-revolutionary language. He calls for a coup following the presentation of the Chartist peti-
tion of 1839, pledging to use “a body of well-armed sans-culottes” against the middle classes, the
bourgeoisie, which he terms the “shopocracy” (Quoted in Kovalev 1956, 334-335). However,
even this article, like most of the left-wing Chartist discourse that advocates physical force, does
154

the socialist Owenites mainly propagated social reforms, workers’ unions, utopian
cooperatives, and other forms of peaceful social change. Unlike in German revo-
lutionary discourse, in which not only parts of the early proletarian movement
but also bourgeois writers such as Büchner and later Marx and Engels came to
support proletarian revolution, such unequivocal endorsement is absent in British
discourse. Unsurprisingly, it also featured much less prominently in British radical
literature of the 1830s and 1840s than it did it in its German counterpart. The
writings of Thomas Lovell Beddoes constitute a rare instance in which this concept
surfaces in revolutionary English literature of this decade. Beddoes (as I will argue
in chapter 3.4) seems to have been more a German proto-socialist revolutionary
than an English radical. Consequently he should be regarded in the context of the
contemporary Franco-German rather than British radical discourse.
Without a meticulous investigation of the links that German revolutionary lit-
erature formed with both the contemporary socio-revolutionary factions and their
discourse, it is impossible to adequately judge and understand the turn towards
social revolution that radical literature underwent in the 1830s and 1840s. Hans-
Joachim Ruckhäberle has argued that especially the writings and pamphlets of the
German early workers’ movement in Paris must be regarded as pivotal texts within
“der literarischen Entwicklung zwischen 1830 und 1848/49.” According to him,
they closely engage the “beiden Grundwidersprüche der Zeit,” that also form the
underlying concern of some of the leftist revolutionary bourgeois literature after
1830 (cf. 1977, 30). While the rise of the industrial capitalist bourgeoisie was in-
creasingly abolishing the remnants of feudalism and its political and social inequal-
ities, this came at the high price of further socioeconomic injustice: the generation
of heightened social inequality through the new socioeconomic system and the in-
dustrial capitalist mode of production. This was subjected to a sharp critique by the
“frühen sozialistischen und proletarischen Bewegung” (30). Ruckhäberle claims
that the critical discourse largely suppressed the key importance and influence of
these early proletarian and socialist texts by the undue privileging of what he terms
the period’s “demokratische ‘Hochliteratur’: Börne-Bücher[sic]-Heine” (cf. 1977,
30). This critique voiced more than thirty years ago has lost little of its relevance
today. To rectify such a discrepancy it is not sufficient just to mention the intercon-
nection between these two types of revolutionary writing, but it is important to
investigate how both closely interlink on an ideological as well as an intertextual
level. Without consideration of the suppressed socialist and proletarian texts as

not display an unwavering commitment to a social revolution in the sense that it would call for
fundamental change in the socioeconomic system of capitalism.
 155

direct intertexts, it is impossible to understand fully the ideological involvement

of Börne, Büchner, and Beddoes within the emerging concept of social revolution.
As critics have conclusively shown, Büchner was the bourgeois German writer
who was most strongly influenced by Neo-Babouvism14 and the early German
proletarian exile associations.15 Yet, since he had largely undergone the shift to-
wards a proletarian social revolution before writing his first literary work Dantons
Tod in 1835,16 it is impossible to trace a fundamental ideological transformation
from political to social revolution within his work. Nevertheless, his early socialist
revolutionary position will serve in this study as a point of reference to judge how
far Heine, Börne, and Beddoes advanced towards a concept of proletarian social
revolution.

14 Walter Grab maintains that the Neo-Babouvist ideology formed “das politische Credo des
frühkommunistischen Sozialrevolutionärs” Büchner (1987, 357). For Büchner’s links to these
ideological factions, see Mayer 1979a, Holmes 1995a & 1995b, and Knapp 2000, 19, 22 & 83-
84. For a critique of Mayer 1979a, whose claims are based in large part on unpublished sources
that he never disclosed, see Wetzel 1981. More transparently and lucidly than Mayer, Terence
M. Holmes fleshes out the close interconnection between the revolutionary ideology of Büchner
and the early French socialists, especially the socio-revolutionary group of the Neo-Babouvists
(see 1995a & b).
15 From a biographical point of view, it is also crucial to mention that in 1834 Büchner founded a
revolutionary ‘Gesellschaft der Menschenrechte’ in Darmstadt and Gießen. It took its name and
partly also its ideology from the French Neo-Babouvist society ‘Société des droits de l’homme et
du citoyen’ (see Mayer 1987a, 168). Furthermore – according to Mayer (1979b, 376) – it also
incorporated elements from the German Parisian society ‘Bund der Geächteten,’ which it also
mirrored in the social background of its members: academics and artisans. For excerpts from the
report about the investigation against the Darmstadt section, see Büchner 2002 II, 687-694. A
comprehensive critical study that investigates the discursive and ideological links between Büch-
ner and the German exile associations remains a necessary task for further Büchner scholarship.
16 Büchner’s school essays and speeches still revolve around the concept of political freedom. For
instance, the essay “Helden-Tod der vierhundert Pforzheimer” (1829 or 1830) is a patriotic
apotheosis of the concepts of political freedom and freedom of thought. To achieve such po-
litical change, Büchner advocates revolution in the German neo-absolutist states (see 2002 II,
18-28).
156

3.2 A Social Revolution Without the Proletariat? The Myth of Heine as a

Socio-Revolutionary Author

3.2.1 A Programme of Proletarian Social Revolution? Heine’s Manifesto of

Sensual Liberation in Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in
Deutschland (1835) and its Early Socialist Critics

In contrast to the other authors discussed here, Heine distanced himself clearly
from the socio-revolutionary discourses of the Neo-Babouvists and the German
early proletarian movement. Nevertheless, critics have widely regarded him as a
prophet of social revolution, not at least because he simply fashioned himself as
such.17 However, as I will argue in the following, he did not undergo the shift to-
wards the contemporary concept of social revolution that assigned the key role in
the transformation of society to the proletariat. In spite of his repeated assertions
throughout the 1840s that he regarded the proletariat as the future force of social
transformation, he never genuinely embraced such a notion, neither during the
1830s nor at a later point. Although Heine never endorsed a radical transforma-
tion of the socioeconomic order, Heine’s brief flirtation with communism in the
mid-1840s has further fed the myth of him as a socio-revolutionary author. Some
critics have even asserted that Heine already underwent this shift in revolution-

17 For an informative albeit biased summary of how Heine portrayed himself throughout his life as
a committed political and increasingly also social revolutionary author, see Mende 1991. He also
argues that it was Heine who coined the term ‘soziale Revolution’ in a letter to Varnhagen, dated
19 November 1830 (see 1991, 86). Such a claim, however, disregards the semantics of Heine’s
term. In the context of the letter, social revolution fundamentally differs from the concept of the
same name. It rather means a political revolution in the human sphere as opposed to a physical
revolution in nature, such as a thunderstorm or earthquake. Claiming that he anticipated the
political earthquake of the July Revolution, he writes: “Wie es Vögel giebt die irgend eine phy-
sische Revoluzion, etwa Gewitter, Erdbeben, Ueberschwemmungen &c vorausahnen, so giebts
Menschen denen die sozialen Revoluzionen sich im Gemüthe voraus ankündigen, und denen
es dabey lähmend betäubend und seltsam stockend zu Muthe wird. So erkläre ich mir meinen
diesjährigen Zustand bis zum Ende July” (Heine 1970 ff. XX, 421-422). It is impossible to list
here the plethora of critics who regard Heine as a socio-revolutionary writer. These also include
socialist critics, some of whom even go as far as to portray Heine’s revolutionary ideology as
proto-Marxist. Georg Lukács’ essay on Heine’s ideological anticipation of the 1848 Revolution
shows how such attempts are doomed to fail. Trying to cast Heine at once as a proto-Marxist
prophet of social revolution and a defender of the bourgeois political revolution, Lukács self-
consciously reveals the inherent paradox of such a perspective. He argues that Heine often goes
considerably beyond the horizons “der bürgerlichen Revolution” and displays a keen awareness
of the need to transgress the limits of bourgeois society. Yet, at the same time, Heine sticks to his
belief in “eine radikal und allseitig durchgeführte bürgerliche Revolution” (Lukács 1978, 36).
 157

ary ideology in the mid-1830s, before any other German author save Büchner. In
my opinion, this thesis lacks any compelling evidence. As I will illustrate in the
following subchapters, an intertextual analysis of some of Heine’s allegedly socio-
revolutionary texts from this period that relates them both to the contemporary
socialist discourse and some more pronouncedly socio-revolutionary texts by other
contemporary radical writers (Büchner, Marx, Börne), reveals his firm ideological
opposition to proletarian social revolution.
Together with the closely interrelated programmatic announcement in Caput I
of Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen (1844) in which the narrator states that he will
compose the song of future human liberation, the following passage from Heine’s
essay Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland (1835) is often
misread as his conversion to the concept of social revolution:18

Die politische Revolution, die sich auf die Prinzipien des französischen Ma-
terialismus stützt, wird in den Pantheisten keine Gegner finden, sondern
Gehülfen, aber Gehülfen, die ihre Überzeugungen aus einer tieferen Quelle,
aus einer religiösen Synthese, geschöpft haben. Wir befördern das Wohl-
sein der Materie, das materielle Glück der Völker, nicht weil wir gleich den
Materialisten den Geist mißachten, sondern weil wir wissen, daß sich die
Göttlichkeit des Menschen sich auch in seiner leiblichen Erscheinung kund
gibt, und das Elend den Leib, das Bild Gottes, zerstört oder aviliert, und der
Geist dadurch ebenfalls zu Grunde geht. Das große Wort der Revolution,
das Saint-Just ausgesprochen: le pain est le droit du peuple, lautet bei uns:
le pain est le droit divin de l’homme. Wir kämpfen nicht für die Men-
schenrechte des Volks, sondern für die Gottesrechte des Menschen. Hie-
rin, und in noch manchen andern Dingen, unterscheiden wir uns von den
Männern der Revolution. Wir wollen keine Sansculotten sein, keine frugale
[sic] Bürger, keine wohlfeile [sic] Präsidenten: wir stiften eine Demokratie
gleichherrlicher, gleichheiliger, gleichbeseligter Götter. Ihr verlangt einfache
Trachten, enthaltsame Sitten und ungewürzte Genüsse; wir hingegen ver-
langen Nektar und Ambrosia, Purpurmäntel, kostbare Wohlgerüche, Wol-
lust und Pracht, lachenden Nymphentanz, Musik und Komödien – Seid
deshalb nicht ungehalten, Ihr tugendhaften Republikaner! (Heine 1997 III,
570)

18 See for instance Höhn 2004, 353-354 and Windfuhr 2004, 110-114. Höhn praises this passage
as an avant-garde “sozial-revolutionär[e] Vision.” According to him, its sophisticated imagery
contains Heine’s uniquely advanced proto-Marxist perspective on “Entfremdung” and, at the
same time, shows how to overcome it (cf. 2004, 354). More cautiously, Norbert Eke speaks of
a “Programm einer umfassenden sozialen und sinnlichen Befreiung der Menschheit” that this
passage supposedly contains (2005, 73).
158

Although Heine employs the term political revolution here, it is conspicuous that
its antithesis, social revolution, is not mentioned at all. The concept that Heine
juxtaposes with political revolution instead is his adaption of the religious doc-
trine of pantheism. For him, it constitutes “die verborgene Religion Deutschlands”
(571) and harbours socially utopian potential. Accordingly, he casts pantheism as
the ideological basis for Germany’s future revolutionary transformation and places
it in strong opposition to crude materialism. The latter, he alleges, forms the sole
philosophical basis for political revolution. However, as a contextual analysis of
this passage will reveal, Heine’s criticism of materialism is not merely limited to the
concept of political revolution but also extends to the concept of social revolution.
He sharply distinguishes his sensualist vision of social change from the materialistic
outlook that characterised most of the contemporary proponents of social revolu-
tion. The ending of the material suffering of the people through the redistribution
of wealth – “Vernichtung des Volkselends durch Minderung des Einzelnübermaß”
as Theodor Schuster called for in a pamphlet in 1835 – constituted a key demand
and a goal in itself, part of the “Schlachtenruf des Proletairs” (1977, 176).
One might argue that Heine here anticipates Marx’s notion of proletarian alien-
ation and its reversal in a social revolution. As pointed out, Marx emphasised that
alienated labour produced “producirt Schönheit, aber Verkrüppelung für d[en]
Arbeiter” (MEGA II, 366). However, for Marx Heine’s demand for a universal
right to beauty and enjoyment of luxury goods without a revolutionary transforma-
tion of the exploitative mode of production would constitute nothing but an idealist
delusion. For Heine, alleviating hunger primarily formed a necessary precondition
to combat the spiritual and sensual impoverishment of humanity. To paraphrase
Heine’s argument, material suffering (“Elend”) is such a great evil since it not only
destroys the body, God’s image, but also the spirit (“Geist”). His major revolution-
ary concern is not to provide the suffering masses with an adequate supply of basic
material goods, but rather to satisfy humanity’s sensual needs. Distancing himself
from St-Just’s dictum that bread forms the prime social right of the lower classes,
vital to safeguarding their material well-being, he propagates an Epicurean sensual-
ism for the refined connoisseurs instead. “Nektar and Ambrosia,” the divine food
of Greek mythology, will serve the latter as nourishment instead of plain bread.
The attribute “divin” that Heine adds to “droit” underlines this point. It is a vision
designed primarily for the bourgeoisie. Heine’s social exclusion of the proletariat
from his sensualist paradise becomes evident when he replaces St. Just’s “peuple,”
designating the lower classes, with the sociologically vague term “l’homme.” Fur-
thermore, he declares he will not campaign for “die Menschenrechte des Volkes”
as contemporary early French socialist groups did as in the case of the ‘Société des
 159

droits de l’homme et du citoyen.’ By contrast, he juxtaposes in a chiastic phrase

these fundamental social human rights (“die Menschenrechte des Volkes”) with
the “Gottesrechte des Menschen.”19 Heine insinuates that the people will only
earn the claim to their divine rights, if they mature from their current state as the
uncivilised brutish rabble to that of refined, civilised, and cultured “Menschen.”
As I will illustrate, he is adamantly opposed to the unconditional social liberation
and emancipation of the proletariat. Conforming to liberal bourgeois ideology, he
posits instead that the proletariat must first be educated, both aesthetically and
ethically.

Exposing Heine’s Social Elitism:

Büchner’s Critique of Heine’s Manifesto in Dantons Tod

The liberal ideology inherent in this passage and its hostility towards a concept of
proletarian revolution emerge fully when one compares it to socio-revolutionary
writings from the early socialist discourse. These include not only texts by mem-
bers of the early proletarian movement, but also some written by bourgeois writers
who engaged with it. Among the bourgeois literary authors one figure stands out:
Georg Büchner. As Henri Poschmann succinctly sums up the difference between
Heine’s bourgeois idealism and Büchner’s materialism:

War für Heine das oberste Ziel seines Emanzipationsprogramms – vom ihm
saint-simonistisch verstanden als die Einsetzung des Menschen in die ihm
zustehenden Gottesrechte – eine Konsequenz der Geschichte des religiösen
und philosophischen Denkens, so war es für Büchner eine primär aus den
materiellen Bedürfnissen der verelendeten arbeitenden Klassen abgeleitete
Notwendigkeit. (Poschmann 1979, 206)

19 As pointed out in chapter 1, Marx in the “Einleitung Zur Kritik der Hegel’schen Rechts-Philoso-
phie” also posits a human right to ‘divinity,’ the doctrine that humans must acknowledge their
fellow human beings as the highest, divine, beings: “daß der Mensch das höchste Wesen für den
Menschen sei” (MEGA II, 177; Marx’s emphasis). In contrast to Heine, however, Marx empha-
sises that such a social utopia requires the violent overthrow of the current society which he
regards as being built on boundless exploitation and degradation, on “der freien Ausbeutung
des Menschen durch den Menschen,” as he famously describes it in Das Kapital (MEW XXIII,
743). As mentioned earlier, in the “Einleitung” Marx concludes that out of the critique of
religion follows the “categorisc[e] Imperativ, alle Verhältnisse umzuwerfen, in denen der Mensch
ein erniedrigtes, ein geknechtetes, ein verlassenes, ein verächtliches Wesen ist” (MEGA II, 177;
Marx’s emphasis).
160

Not only did Büchner have nothing but scorn for the liberals and their social and
political ideas,20 but he also subscribed fervently to the socio-revolutionary agenda
of the early socialist movement.21 Furthermore, there is concrete textual evidence
of his critical engagement with Heine and his social concepts. In at least two pas-
sages in his oeuvre, one from Dantons Tod (1835) and the other from Leonce und
Lena (1836-37), Büchner intertextually refers to Heine’s sensualist manifesto from
Zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Religion in Deutschland. Most critics so far have
argued that in both instances Büchner echoes and affirms Heine’s idea of social
revolution. Even Terence Holmes, who otherwise astutely pinpoints Büchner’s rev-
olutionary stance, concludes that Heine’s scenario displays a strong “affinity with
Büchner’s own social criticism.” Thus, it could be termed Heine’s “programme of
proletarian revolution” (1995b, 105). In my opinion, this commonly accepted
verdict must be questioned and ultimately revised. As I will suggest through a
close intertextual comparison, Büchner does not share Heine’s social ideology. On
the contrary, he sharply parodies the liberal ideology of Heine’s manifesto, both
concerning its attitude towards the proletariat and its complicity with capitalist
exploitation. The contextualisation of Büchner’s and Heine’s texts with a key pam-
phlet of the German early proletarian movement will further help to elucidate the
differences between their respective revolutionary ideologies.
In scene I, 1 of Dantons Tod, the Dantonists debate the present course of the
revolution and their future strategy, while entertaining themselves with prostitutes
and playing card games. Camille Desmoulins, who joins them in the middle of
the scene, conjures up a vision of sensual revolution that utters almost literally
the same demands as Heine’s. Like the latter, he wants to replace the austere re-
publicanism that Robespierre and others preach with an Epicurean indulgence
in sexuality and aestheticism. Not only does he hark back to the same ideas of
Dionysian enjoyment, with words and rhetoric reminiscent of Heine, but he also

20 In his letters, he repeatedly comments very negatively on liberal German politics and their per-
ceived complicity in the exploitation of the people. In his eyes, the liberals are willingly playing
their ludicrous part in German political farce at the expense of the lower classes, as he alleges
in the following passage from a letter to August Stöber (9 December 1833): “Das arme Volk
schleppt geduldig den Karren, worauf die Fürsten und Liberalen ihre Affenkomödie spielen”
(Büchner 2002 II, 400).
21 Thomas Mayer was one of the first to trace these ideological links between Büchner and the con-
temporary socialist groups in France in the late 1970s (Mayer 1979a & b). Terence Holmes, in
his study of the revolutionary ideology of Dantons Tod, gives ample textual evidence that proves
this interconnection (1995). Moreover, in an essay that compares Wilhelm Schulz’s, Büchner’s,
and Marx’s use of statistics, Walter Grab illustrates how the socialist Büchner was far more left-
wing in social terms than his social republican friend (see Grab 1987).
 161

embraces – at least as emphatically as Heine – a scenario of unbridled sensualism

in his manifesto:

Wir wollen nackte Götter, Bacchantinnen, olympische Spiele, und melo-

dische Lippen: ach, die gliederlösende, böse Liebe! Wir wollen den Römern
nicht verwehren sich in die Ecke zu setzen und Rüben zu kochen aber sie
sollen uns keine Gladiatorspiele mehr geben wollen. Der göttliche Epicur
und die Venus mit dem schönen Hintern müssen statt der Heiligen Marat
und Chalier die Türsteher der Republik werden. Danton du wirst den An-
griff im Konvent machen. (I, 1; Büchner 2002 I, 15-16)

Camille reiterates Heine’s antithesis between “frugale Bürger” with their “enthalt-
same Sitten und ungewürzte Genüsse” and “eine Demokratie gleichherrlicher [...]
Götter” with “Wollust und Pracht, lachenden Nymphentanz, Musik und Komödi-
en.” The equivalent terms that Camille employs are the “Römer” who are cooking
“Rüben” and staging “Gladiatorspiele” (i.e. the mass executions) and the “nackte
Götter, Bacchantinen, olympische Spiele, und melodische Lippen.” Both evoke
the same contrast between an ascetic, fanatic Jacobin republicanism modelled on
the Roman ideal and a liberally hedonistic democracy associated with Hellenistic
sensualism. While diametrically opposed in various ways, both models share the
exclusion of the proletariat from social and political power. Ironically, it is not the
masses – that lack even the most basic food – that are cooking root vegetables,
but the bourgeois Jacobins in their contrived austerity, as Camille’s witticism be-
trays.22 Yet while, at least in Jacobin propaganda, the lower classes and their social
demands feature prominently (as also Heine reminds his readers by quoting St.
Just’s bon mot), Camille’s (and Heine’s) utopia does not encompass them. The ‘we’
in Camille’s manifesto does not speak for them but, on the contrary, excludes
them from the sensualist paradise. Unlike Terence Holmes, who – in contrast to
Camille’s declaration – identifies in Heine’s manifesto an indictment of the “scan-
dal of poverty” and a denouncement of social “exclusivity” (1995b, 110), I would
claim that the poor and their living conditions are largely absent from Heine’s vi-
sion, too. While it is true that Heine – unlike Camille – mentions “misery” (albeit
22 If one gives credence to August Becker’s statement in the trial against the Landboten conspira-
tors, then Büchner clearly thought of material deprivation as greater evil then mental (“geistige”)
pressure. Indicting the lack of staple food by referring to another root vegetable, potatoes, Büch-
ner often declared that “der materielle Druck, unter welchem ein großer Theil Deutschlands
liege, sei ebenso traurig und schimpflich, als der geistige; und es sei in seinen Augen bei weitem
nicht so betrüb<lich>, daß dieser oder jener Liberale seine Gedanken nicht drucken lassen dür-
fe, als daß viele tausend Familien nicht im Stand wären, ihre Kartoffeln zu schmelzen usw.”
(Büchner 2002 II, 661)
162

in an abstract manner), Heine does not mention ‘poverty’ either. Moreover, the de-
mands of Heine’s speaker, who also uses the first person plural, do not match those
of the poor. Not merely are the envisioned luxury goods and fantastic pleasures
beyond their reach, but Heine’s vision also ignores the outrageous fact that “für
die meisten Menschen auch die armseligsten Genüsse und Freuden unerreichbare
Kostbarkeiten sind,” as Büchner writes in a letter to his family on 1 January 1836.
Significantly, in the same letter Büchner also sharply distances himself from the
“Jungen Deutschland, der Partei Gutzkow’s und Heine’s” (Büchner 2002 II, 423); a
connection that Henri Poschmann draws attention to (1979, 205-206). The ideas
of bourgeois liberal revolutionaries, such as Heine, are out of touch with the social
reality.
Also Camille’s model differs fundamentally from the demands of the socio-
revolutionary among the French revolutionaries. How deeply this model of soci-
ety is invested with liberal-bourgeois, and hence anti-proletarian values, becomes
evident when one considers the socio-revolutionary ideology “die Heiligen Marat
und Chalier” epitomise. The Jacobins use these dead social radicals as republican
saints, as martyrs of the revolution in order to exploit their continuing popularity
with the sans-culottes. Exposing this propagandistic move of Robespierre, Camille
at the same time dismisses the socio-revolutionary agenda of Marat and Chalier.23
By replacing them with “[d]er göttliche Epicur und die Venus mit dem schönen
Hintern” as doorkeepers of the republic (“Türsteher der Republik”), he literally
aims to keep the rabble out of his socially exclusive social utopia. Instead of proto-
socialist activism Camille preaches liberal bourgeois hedonism. Like Heine, who
distances himself from any social revolution involving the proletariat (“wir wollen
keine Sansculotten sein”), Camille also firmly excludes the proletariat from his
sensual democracy. Furthermore, he – like Heine – resorts to philosophical-theo-
logical arguments to discredit the social concept of proletarian revolution. It is the
Judaeo-Christian enmity to sensualism that is the ‘religion’ that drives the social
radicals and their regime of terror. Both Heine and Camille contrast the tyranny of
ascetic fanaticism that they associate with a social republic with the freedom of a
sensualistic Hellenism that they align with liberal democracy.24 This conflict is not
merely a historic one but also lies at the heart of the ideological battles about pro-
23 In particular the executed Chalier had been “Schrittmacher der Volksbewegung der Enragés
(Wütenden)” who, as Henri Poschmann explains, put forward strongly antibourgeois, anti-cap-
italist, and socio-revolutionary demands such as “radikale Maßnahmen zur Existenzsicherung
der ökonomisch Benachteiligten (Preisstop für Versorgungsgüter, Beschlagnahmungen, Sozial-
hilfe, Bekämpfung von Spekulanten und Verrätern)” (Büchner 2002 I, 484).
24 As Walter Hinderer points out, in Französische Zustände Heine casts the struggle between the
main revolutionary leaders Robespierre and Danton as an ideological battle between the “Welt-
 163

letarian social revolution that were taking place between republicans, liberals and
early socialists throughout the 1830s; a dimension that is sometimes overlooked in
Heine-Büchner criticism.25
Büchner, firmly one the side of radical socio-revolutionary programme, high-
lights the urgency of it in the scene (I, 2) of Dantons Tod that immediately follows
the one in which Camille outlines his future vision for the French Republic. In
this scene, Büchner parodies both Camille’s and Heine’s theories of a sensual social
revolution by exposing them as the ideology of a privileged and exploitative class,
the bourgeoisie. Camille’s Venus, with the beautiful behind, reoccurs as a girl who
is forced into prostitution to provide for her family. Moreover, countering the
conservative perception that it was the mob that ruled during the Terror, Büch-
ner depicts how even during the most radical phase of the French Revolution the
sans-culottes are recklessly exploited and deprived of any right to nourishment.
Robespierre and St. Just, whose dictum “le pain est le droit du peuple” Heine
quotes, employ the concept of social revolution in the drama merely to safeguard
their power. The actual social revolution remains a lacuna, as Büchner also em-
phasises when he lets Robespierre declare in a dialogue with Danton in I, 6: “Die
soziale Revolution ist noch nicht fertig” (2002 I, 32). Robespierre and Saint-Just
play with the concept of social revolution to legitimise their reign of terror. While
they fail to improve the material situation of the poor in practice, for instance by
redistributing wealth, they use it as a slogan against the more moderate Jacobins
such as Danton. Danton, Camille, as well as Heine, remain even more staunchly
opposed to any socio-revolutionary measures that could empower the proletariat.
They not even consider them in theory, let alone in practice. Instead of demanding
the right to bread for the people as an essential human right, they replace it with
their respective sensualist fantasies.

anschauung des Stoizismus und des Epikureismus, des Dogmatikers und des Skeptikers, des
Spiritualisten und Sensualisten, des Nazareners und Hellenen” (1991, 208).
25 Takanori Teraoka (2006), who has furnished the so-far most sustained comparison of Heine’s
and Büchner’s use of the concept of “Götterdemokratie”, argues that Heine’s concept is merely
directed against – by then – anachronistic Jacobin social concepts: “Die Götterdemokratie war
der Versuch, die jakobinische Sozialpolitik durch die auf Saint-Simonismus basierte (sic) phi-
losophische und ökonomische Theorie zu überwinden“ (2006, 100-101; Teraoka’s emphasis).
Büchner, in spite of all his critique of Heine unrealistic programme of social revolution, did
not take issue with this “Sozialutopie” of Heine as such (cf. 2006, 197). Such a view, however,
overlooks that Heine’s critique not merely applies to the social politics of the Jacobins of the
1790s but also extends to the programme of social revolution as put forward by the radical
French early socialists of the 1830s. This, however, as Terence Holmes has shown (1995b), forms
a cornerstone of Büchner’s revolutionary politics.
164

Büchner’s stance is not only hostile towards Robespierre’s faction but also his at-
titude towards the Dantonists is far less sympathetic and far more ironic than has
often been assumed. Throughout his play he suggests that the refusal of the bour-
geois revolutionaries to change the exploitative position of the proletariat within
the capitalist process of production must be regarded as the major failure of the
French Revolution (as well as of the July Revolution of 1830 to which Büchner’s
historical drama implicitly refers). This constitutes the tragic crisis of Dantons Tod
and not the downfall of its title ‘hero’ and his adherents. In spite of all revolution-
ary struggles and reiterated promises by the bourgeois leaders to improve their
material situation, the sans-culottes still lack the basic material needs of life as
direly as before the revolution. As one of them angrily points out, “wir laufen wie
zuvor auf nackten Beinen und frieren” (Büchner 2002 I, 19). Since from Büchner’s
early socialist perspective the bourgeoisie is seen to deprive the working class of the
fruits of their labour, a violent revolution of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie
is regarded as vital. This violence, according to Büchner, will lead to decisive socio-
revolutionary change. This need for a proletarian social revolution is demanded
by another sans-culotte in an angry speech. As Henri Poschmann points out in
his commentary (see Büchner 2002 I, 489-491), this sharp satire of Camille’s and
Heine’s call for sensual indulgence echoes passages from the socio-revolutionary
works of Babeuf and Filippo Buonarroti and the enragé Jacques Roux:

Ihr habt Kollern im Leib und sie haben Magendrücken, ihr habt Löcher in
den Jacken und sie haben warme Röcke, ihr habt Schwielen in den Fäus-
ten, und sie haben Samthände. Ergo ihr arbeitet und sie tun nichts, ergo
ihr habt’s erworben, und sie haben’s gestohlen; ergo, wenn ihr von eurem
gestohlnen Eigentum ein paar Heller wieder haben wollt, müßt ihr huren
und betteln; ergo, sie sind Spitzbuben und man muß sie totschlagen. (I, 2;
Büchner 2002 I, 18)

Büchner’s sans-culotte indicts the rich of robbing the proletariat of the product of
their labour, their rightful possession. All the ‘property’ the proletarians have left
is their alienated labour through which they must try to reclaim a portion of their
stolen property in whatever possible manner, be it through prostitution or through
beggary.
 165

‘Murder’ in the Labour Process:

Early Socialist and Early Proletarian Indictments of Exploited Labour

This allegation against the upper classes that the sans-culotte voices here, namely
that the exploitation of proletariat’s labour amounts to a severe crime, stems direct-
ly from the contemporary socio-revolutionary discourse. For instance, Buonarroti
in his Conspiration pour l’égalité dite de Babeuf (1828) maintains that the existence
of those idlers who live off the “Schweiße des Arbeitsmannes, den Mühsal und
Entbehrung zu Boden drückte” is based on criminal exploitation. From this he
radically concludes that “Eigentum ist also die schlimmste Geißel der Gesellschaft,
es ist in der Tat ein Verbrechen an der Allgemeinheit,” as it forms the foundation of
social inequality (Quoted in Höppner & Seidel-Höppner 1975 II, 98; their trans-
lation). The only form of property that is not regarded as deriving from criminal
exploitation, and hence rightful, is the direct product of one’s own labour.
This position is not limited to the early French socialist discourse, but is also
taken up by the early German proletarian movement in France, as it developed
through German exile artisan associations; it is also advanced in the anonymously
published pamphlet Gedanken eines Republikaners. Written by Karl Wilhelm Theo-
dor Schuster, a member of the ‘Bund der Geächteten’ in Paris, it was first published
in the same year as Dantons Tod (1835):

Eigenthum ist daher jedes für die natürlichen Bedürfnisse des Menschen un-
entbehrliche Gut; [...] Kein Gegenstand menschlicher Bedürfnisse wird
gewonnen ohne die Verwendung menschlicher Kräfte. Arbeit ist daher
die Grundbedingung jedes Eigenthumserwerbs, und jeder arbeitskräftige
Bürger, welcher Güter in Anspruch nimmt, deren Erwerb nicht unmittel-
bar oder mittelbar aus der eigenen Thätigkeit herstammen, begeht einen
Verstoß wider die Gesetzte der Natur und einen strafbaren Eingriff in die
Eigenthumsrechte seines Nächsten. […] Wer Gewalt gebraucht, um einen
Andern aus den zustehenden Früchten seiner Arbeit zu entsetzen; wer sich
listiger Mittel bedient, um ihm seine rechtmäßigen Güter zu entlocken, der
erwirbt als Räuber, als Dieb, als Betrüger [...] Ein Fabrikant trotzt auf seine
Reichthümer, weil, sagt er, sie der mühsame Ertrag sind von langjähriger
Arbeit. – Aber ist es denn er selbst, der seine Stoffe erzeugt, er selbst, der
seine Fabriken erbaut, er selbst, der seine Maschienen verfertigt, der seine
Goldstücke gemünzt, oder sind es die Kräfte Anderer? Und wenn es Andere
waren, die Kräfte, Gesundheit, Frohsinn und Leben geopfert, um der Erde
ihre Früchte zu entreißen und dem Gewerbe seinen Ertrag: wie wagt Er, der
Nicht-Urheber, sich zu übersättigen, während die Werk-Urheber hungern,
166
ja! es ist das Wort, Brüder, hungern!! (Schuster 1977, 190-191; emphasis in
the original)

Both Schuster and Büchner’s sans-culotte argue that the exploitation of the pro-
letariat’s labour amounts to a crime, to robbery, since the direct product of one’s
labour constitutes the only form of rightful property. Any other form is based
on the criminal exploitation of the workers and the forced alienation from their
products. This enables the luxurious existence of the rich. The “Fabrikant” is as
much a “Spitzbube” as the rich aristocratic idler, since both live off the labour and
exploitation of others. In the same pamphlet Schuster asserts, in an expression that
could be regarded as a paraphrase of the words of Büchner’s sans-culotte, that the
basis of the contemporary socioeconomic system forms the “legalisirte Vermögen-
sraub, ausgeübt von einer herrschenden Minderzahl wider die unterjochte und mit
Füßen getretene Mehrzahl” (186). The social injustice of this mode of production
that is based on the exploitation and alienation of labour generates, perpetuates,
and exacerbates the existing socioeconomic inequalities. Both Schuster and Büch-
ner’s sans-culotte insist on this in two comparable antitheses. Both revolve around
the theme of gluttony and starvation and contrast the utter deprivation of the
labourer to the superfluous riches of the capitalist. While this had been a trope in
radical discourse for centuries (see also chapter 2 of this study), it seems striking to
me that both expose in a proto-Marxist manner that it is the exploitative mode of
production itself that generates this crass socioeconomic contrast. As they suggest,
it is the socioeconomic system that allows the capitalists to become rich because
it enables them to recklessly exploit proletarian labour.26 As Schuster writes, it

26 Another pamphlet Der Deutsche Volksverein: Brüder und Freunde (January 1834), which, accord-
ing to Terence Holmes, Büchner might have known(1995b, 86), even develops a rudimentary
theory of the ‘surplus value’ of labour: “Und in wessen Taschen geht diese Hälfte des Kaufpreises
welche Euch von Gottes- und Rechtswegen gehört, weil Ihr sie durch Eure saure Arbeit erwor-
ben hat? In die des Reichen, des Müssigen oder wenigstens des Nichtverfertigers des Gegen-
standes den man ihm bezahlt; in die Tasche des Kapitalisten, d. h. des Mannes welcher das Ka-
pital hergestreckt hat, dessen Ursprung Ihr […] auf wessen Unkosten sind sie reich geworden?
Auf Unkosten der Armen auf Eure Unkosten. Hätten Sie Euch gegeben, was Euch gebührte, so
könnten sie keine Schätze angehäuft haben. Reichthümer ansammeln, während so viele Brüder
im tiefsten Elend schmachten, ist gegen alle Gerechtigkeit und göttlichen Willen. Der Preis also den
Ihre für Eure Arbeit erhaltet, beläuft sich kaum die Hälfte dessen, was Euch gebührt” (quoted in
Ruckhäberle 1977, 105; emphasis in original). In spite of the considerable higher degree of eco-
nomic sophistication than in the speech of Büchner’s sans-culotte, it seems plausible to consider
this pamphlet as a possible intertext to Dantons Tod. It lacks, however, the pronounced socio-
revolutionary edge that characterises both the sans-culotte’s speech and Schuster’s pamphlet. At
the end, its authors appeal to their reader not to take back their stolen possessions from the rich.
Instead they should aim to become economically self-sufficient: “Sagen wir Euch, Ihr sollt den
 167

permits the “Nicht-Urheber, sich zu übersättigen, während die Werk-Urheber hun-

gern.” The sans-culotte puts forward the same argument when he defines this class
that “arbeitet” to have “Kollern im Bauch” due to the lack of food. Meanwhile
those who “tun nichts” experience “Magendrücken” from overeating. This is not
so much a moral failing of the individual capitalists but an endemic failing of a
system that is based on the principle of alienated labour. Schuster implies that
“einen Andern aus den zustehenden Früchten seiner Arbeit zu entsetzen” or “ihm
seine rechtmäßigen Güter zu entlocken,” is the raison d’être of capitalism. Or, to
put it more bluntly, the workers have manufactured (“erworben”) the goods and
the capitalists have robbed (“gestohlen”), as the sans-culotte alleges.
Both Schuster and Büchner suggest that the socio-revolutionary anger that fu-
els these words is still repressed but it is only waiting for an occasion to erupt.
As Schuster predicts, the ‘white slaves’ of Europe, “der Geächteten Europas,” the
proletarians will soon answer their exploiters with “dem Brandzeichen der socialen
Revolution” much in the same way as their black brothers, the slaves, did on Haiti’s
plantations in the 1790s. He already observes the first signs of the coming proletar-
ian revolution all across Europe in workers’ riots and uprisings (cf. Schuster 1977,
192) and concludes that this class war will end only with the “radikal sociale und
politische Emanzipation der arbeitenden Klassen” (186; emphasis in original).
As illustrated, Büchner adopts a similar perspective in Dantons Tod. Through a
further statement by a lower-class character Büchner casts a proletarian revolution
as the only solution to alter the inherently exploitative system of capitalism, “den
Raubunfug der Kapitalherrschaft,” as Schuster terms it (1977, 187). In a similar
vein, another sans-culotte, the “Dritt[e] Bürger,” in Scene I, 2 exposes the capital-
ist socioeconomic system itself as highly criminal. As he alleges, it turns the pro-
letarian existence into “ein Mord durch Arbeit.” Unlike the first sans-culotte who
directs his anger merely against the exploiters, when he maintains, “man muß sie
totschlagen” to end exploitation, the third sans-culotte seems to envisage a more
fundamental transition of the mode of production and of the position the pro-
letariat has in it. He prophesies that the proletarians will eventually triumph in
changing the current socioeconomic system, a system in which they are locked up
for life, like a hanged man struggling for his life:27

Reichen nehmen, was sie haben und es unter Euch vertheilen? Keineswegs. Alles was wir Euch
empfehlen, ist: ‘Behaltet selbst, was Ihr verdient, und ernähret weder Schwelger noch Müssiggänger
mehr mit Eurem Schweiße’” (107; emphasis in original).
27 As various critics have pointed out, this statement relates both to Büchner’s own hopes for an
upcoming social revolution in Germany and his claim for Dantons Tod as a socio-revolutionary
play, which he voices in a letter to Gutzkow in March 1835: “Aber Sie sollen noch erleben,
168
Nur ein Spielen mit einer Hanflocke um den Hals! S’ist nur ein Augenblick
wir sind barmherziger als ihr. Unser Leben ist ein Mord durch Arbeit, wir
hängen 60 Jahre lang am Strick und zappeln, aber wir werden uns losschnei-
den. An die Laterne! (Büchner 2002 I, 19).

Murdering the exploiters is justified as they are continuously murdering the ex-
ploited. Legitimising proletarian socio-revolutionary violence, the sans-culotte
employs a very similar argument to Schuster. Both allege that the violence that the
proletarians use in their socio-revolutionary struggle to obtain their just goals pales
in comparison with the ubiquitous and perpetual violence that their exploiters
subject them to throughout their existence:

“Aber unser Zweck ist Anarchie und Raub!” Wie, Anarchie und Raub? Und
diesen Vorwurf macht ihr uns, die Ihr durch Eure Gesetze zum Bedränger
der Armen macht, und dadurch den Armen wider Jenen entflammt zum
natürlichen und unversöhnlichen Haß; […] Eure Throne gründet auf Mord
und terroristische Gewalt; die Ihr in den Marterwerkstätten der Handwerke
für Eure Gelüste in einem Jahr mehr Leben aufreibt, und in der Dämpfung
von Aufständen, zum Schutze Eurer Ungerechtigkeit, mehr Blut vergießt,
als für die Vertheidigung unsrer Grundsätze geopfert und vergossen wurde
seit Anbeginn der Weltgeschichte? Ihr wollt uns anklagen, Ihr uns, die wir
Versöhnung lehren durch Verminderung des Ueberflusses und gänzlicher
Auslöschung der Noth […] (Schuster 1977, 186-187; emphasis in origi-
nal)

Faced with these conspicuous intertextual parallels between Dantons Tod and Schus-
ter’s “Gedanken eines Republikaner,” one begins to doubt increasingly whether
the masses in Büchner’s play are as irrational and unconscious as has often been
asserted. When one considers the remarks of Büchner’s proletarians in the light of
Schuster’s pamphlet, it becomes questionable whether their resistance is entirely
irrationally motivated, solely by their “sozialen Instinkt” and not by any higher
consciousness of social contradictions, as Michael Voges argues in a statement that
is characteristic of the majority of scholarship on Dantons Tod (see 1990, 29).
By contrast, I would contend that it is not the irrationality or the naivety – let
alone the stupidity – of the masses that is Büchner’s main target, but rather the

zu was ein Deutscher nicht fähig ist wenn er Hunger hat. […] Wenn es einmal ein Mißjahr
gibt, worin nur der Hanf gerät! Das sollte lustig gehen, wie wollen schon ein Boa Constriktor
zusammen flechten. Mein Danton ist vorläufig ein seidnes Schnürchen und meine Muse ein
verkleideter Samson [the main executioner during the French Revolution]” (Büchner 2002 II,
397-398).
 169

tragic-comic blindness of the bourgeoisie. Büchner purposely contrasts the first

stirrings of socio-revolutionary action in his proletarians, which arise out of an
emerging insight into the socioeconomic contradictions, with the complete inac-
tion of the bourgeois revolutionaries around Danton. As Hérault sarcastically com-
ments on Danton’s commitment to decisive political action (“Handeln”), Danton’s
political games become mere means to escape lethargy and ennui. He engages in
revolutionary politics “bloß zum Zeitvertreib, so wie man Schach spielt” (I.1; cf.
16-17). Also Camille’s Heine-inspired fantasy can be seen as a sort of occupa-
tional therapy for resigned bourgeois revolutionaries who are gradually turning
into a living anachronisms. This is suggested by the repeated reference to ancient
Rome and Greece. On the other hand, the socio-political Elysium, in its apothe-
osis of idleness, mirrors the existing ennui of the once revolutionary bourgeoisie
that gripped it after its triumph in the French as well as the July Revolution. As
a sensualist idler’s paradise, however, Camille’s vision remains a realistic option
for the privileged few. Utterly detached from the immediate political and social
reality of the majority, it forms a satirical reflection on the social reality of the
rich and not a manifesto of proletarian revolution. Danton himself mockingly
exposes its unsuitability as a programme for mass social change when he questions
Camille: “Wer soll denn all diese schönen Dinge ins Werk setzen?” (Büchner 2002
I, 16) Ironically, many of Camille’s demands are already reality for the bourgeois
revolutionary elite: “der göttliche Epikur” is already a godhead for the hedonistic
Dantonist, “die gliederlösende, böse Liebe” is already continuously being practiced
by the Dantonists and the many a “Venus mit dem schönen Hintern,” Danton’s
prostitutes, has literally become the doorkeeper of the republic (cf. Büchner 2002
I, 15-16; my emphasis). As Lacroix ironically stresses in a speech that echoes all
these words from Camille’s vision, Danton’s main activity is having sex with pros-
titutes: “Er sucht eben die mediceische Venus stückweise bei allen Grisetten des
Palais-Royal zusammen. […] der Himmel weiß bei welchem Glied er gerade ist” (I,
4; 26; my emphasis). Again, the Dantonists’ hedonistic life of leisure is caricatured
in the mass scene that follows Camille’s sensualist manifesto. The kind of sexual
exploitation that the Dantonists commit against their prostitutes in their palais
is contrasted with proletarian prostitution on the streets.28 Using the same word
as Laxcroix, a female sans-culotte whose daughter works as a prostitute indicts
the constant exploitation of proletarian labour. In a sarcastic pun on “Glied,” as
meaning both ‘limb’ and ‘penis,’ she maintains: “Wir arbeiten mit allen Gliedern”
(Büchner 2002 I, 18; my emphasis).

28 Cf. also Takanori Teraoka (2006) who rightly points out that “die Dantonisten im Drama als
sexuelle Ausbeuter charakterisiert sind“ (S. 180).
170

The proletariat’s aspirations are strongly rooted both in the contemporary socioeco-
nomic context and in an expression of a utopian social order in which exploitation
and class war will have been overcome. Büchner’s proletariat does not only display
socio-revolutionary tendencies, but also vehemently insists – in contrast to Heine’s
declaration in his manifesto – on its material basic rights. It demands its right to
bread and its right to a decent existence: to live in a society in which working for a
living does not mean a slow and prolonged death. Büchner’s proletarians even go
as far as to explicitly accuse the bourgeois revolutionaries of failing to change their
material living conditions. As a group of lower-class women angrily asserts, “Die
Guillotine ist eine schlechte Mühle und Samson [the executioner] ein schlechter
Bäckerknecht, wir wollen Brot, Brot!” (III, 10; Büchner 2002 I, 75)
However, in spite of his pronounced sympathies for the proletariat and its
struggle, Büchner refrains from romanticising it. Despite depicting the awakening
socioeconomic consciousness and the socio-revolutionary potential of the prole-
tariat, Büchner also portrays it as being easily misled and betrayed by the bour-
geois revolutionary leaders and ideologues. Especially the fanatical Robespierre
frequently – and successfully – pays lip service to the proletariat’s social demands
to win the power struggle and to achieve his own political ends. Unsurprisingly,
under their desperate material circumstances, the temptation for the proletarians
to trust such social promises is great. Büchner’s Robespierre uses even the term and
concept of social revolution for his strategic purposes. As briefly mentioned, in the
crucial dialogue with Danton in I, 6, Robespierre explicitly states that the revolu-
tion is unfinished. He then moves on to stress the necessity of social revolution
following the political one. This is a thesis to which both the Neo-Babouvists of
the 1830s and Büchner subscribed.29 One might say that for one fleeting moment,
Robespierre virtually becomes Büchner’s mouthpiece.30 However, Robespierre
then immediately misuses this socio-revolutionary claim as a pretext to justify his
reign of terror:

Die soziale Revolution ist noch nicht fertig, wer eine Revolution <nur> zur
Hälfte vollendet, gräbt sich selbst ein Grab. Die gute Gesellschaft ist noch
nicht tot, die gesunde Volkskraft muß sich an die Stelle dieser nach allen
29 Terence Holmes has convincingly illustrated how Büchner’s socio-revolutionary ideology is
based on texts by the early French socialists (see in particular 1995b, 46-65).
30 Cf. Büchner’s famous endorsement of proletarian social revolution in a letter to Gutzkow from
June 1836 that uses similar words: “Ich glaube man muß in socialen Dingen von einem abso-
luten Rechtsgrundsatz ausgehen, die Bildung eines neuen geistigen Lebens im Volk suchen und
die abgelebte moderne Gesellschaft zum Teufel gehen lassen” (Büchner 2002 II, S. 440; empha-
sis in original).
 171
Richtungen abgekitzelten Klasse setzen. Das Laster muß bestraft, die Tu-
gend muß durch den Schrecken herrschen. (Büchner 2002 I, 32)

Drawing upon the bourgeois ethic of virtue, Robespierre uses the buzzword “so-
cial revolution” to strike a rhetorical blow against his imagined and real enemies:
the hardly existent remnants of old aristocracy and his bourgeois enemies, i.e. the
Dantonists with their frivolous lifestyles.
Büchner’s outlook on social revolution, which is grounded in Babouvinist and
the early proletarian German revolutionary discourse, is fundamentally opposed
to Camille’s and Heine’s apotheosis of luxury and indulgence. What emerges most
prominently through the intertextual comparison is that their visions conspicu-
ously evade any mention of labour. Instead, they conjure up an earthly paradise
in which idleness is seen as a divine quality. Thus, one could argue, their scenarios
enshrine the ideology and the modus operandi of a socioeconomic system that both
Büchner’s sans-culottes and Schuster forcefully attack. In particular, when one
considers the discourse of exploited and alienated labour (to which Büchner both
ideologically and intertextually refers), it seems impossible to uphold the wide-
spread thesis that Heine’s manifesto demands “a programme of proletarian strug-
gle” that is related to Büchner’s, as Terence Holmes paradigmatically maintains (cf.
1995b, 101).

A Fool’s Paradise?
Valerio’s Parody of Heine’s Sensualist Idlers’ Paradise in Leonce und Lena

A contextualisation of Heine’s manifesto with Büchner’s farcical comedy Leonce

und Lena further invalidates this dominant view as it reveals how firmly Büchner
is opposed to Heine’s vision. In the final lines of this bitterly satirical comedy,
Büchner exposes – even more directly than in Dantons Tod – how Heine’s sce-
nario is complicit with the ruling ideology and the dominant socioeconomic sys-
tem. This becomes particularly evident in the last lines of the play. In these lines,
the lower-class fool character Valerio, who has just been designated minister by
the prince-turned King Leonce, issues a decree against labour. Literally recalling
Heine’s vision from Zur Geschichte der Religion und der Philosophie in Deutschland,
it proposes laws that will criminalise proletarian labour. At the same time, it el-
evates aristocratic-bourgeois indulgence and idleness to the prescribed life-style,
the raison d’être of society:
172
[...] es wird ein Dekret erlassen, daß, wer sich Schwielen in die Hände
schafft, unter Kuratel gestellt wird; daß, wer sich krank arbeitet, krimina-
listisch strafbar ist; daß jeder, der sich rühmt, sein Brot im Schweiße seines
Angesichts zu essen, für verrückt und der menschlichen Gesellschaft gefähr-
lich erklärt wird; und dann legen wir uns in den Schatten und bitten Gott
um Makkaroni, Melonen und Feigen, um musikalische Kehlen, klassische
Leiber und eine komm[o]de Religion! (Büchner 2002 I, 129)

Although the Arcadia that the fool Valerio sketches out forms a more material and
prosaic version of an earthly paradise than Heine’s vision, the former unmistakably
echoes the latter, both semantically and ideologically: Heine’s “Nektar und Am-
brosia” have become “Makkaroni, Melonen und Feigen,” “Musik und Komödien”
equal Valerio’s wish for “musikalische Kehlen,” “klassische Leiber” relates back to
“Wollust und Pracht, lachenden Nymphentanz,” and finally the “kom[o]de Reli-
gion” that Valerio envisages recalls Heine’s sensualist variety of “Pantheismus” in
a kind of “religiös[e] Synthese” (cf. Heine 1997 III, 570). The manifesto of Büch-
ner’s materialist fool forms a cogent parody of Heine’s original. At the same time,
even more clearly than in Dantons Tod, it is evident how the contemporary socio-
economic reality is caricatured in the play’s vision of an idlers’ paradise.
Both visions form an apotheosis of idleness. In contrast to Heine, who does
not refer to labour at all, Valerio’s manifesto relates ironically to the contemporary
discourse on the exploitation of labour. Particularly the first part of Valerio’s decree
not only reveals that exploitative labour is vital to keep up the level of luxurious
life-style that the upper classes already enjoy, but it also echoes other instances in
Büchner’s oeuvre that voice such socioeconomic critique.31 Most evidently, Vale-
rio’s speech relates back to the preceding scene in Leonce und Lena (III, 2), the
so-called ‘peasants scene.’ Valerio’s law against labour directly echoes the equally
cynical orders that the “Landrat” issues to a group of starving peasant. In blatant
discrepancy with their dire social-material situations and his threats of violence
against them, the Landrat commands the ragged troop to sideline the road out of
their own accord and act like well-dressed, well-fed, content and respectable citi-
zens when the royal couple will pass by: “Gebt Acht, Leute, im Programm steht:
sämtliche Untertanen werden von freien Stücken, reinlich gekleidet, wohlgenährt
und mit zufriedenen Gesichtern sich längs der Landstraße aufstellen. Macht uns
keine Schande” (III, 2; Büchner 2002a, 121). The same skewed logic that an an-
nouncement by the authorities could alter the material reality also informs Vale-
rio’s decree.

31 For a general investigation of the treatment of labour in Büchner’s works, see Armstrong 1981.
 173

Moreover, Valerio’s speech marks an inversion of the allegations of exploitation

that the sans-culottes voice in Scene I, 2 of Dantons Tod. The first sans-culotte
in Dantons Tod angrily complains that the proletarians have “Schwielen in den
Fäusten,” whereas the rich whom he regards as criminals who exploit proletar-
ian labour, sport “Samthände.” As pointed out, the third sans-culotte alleges that
the poor are forced to a life of “Mord durch Arbeit.” Valerio turns these accusa-
tions around. From his perspective, whoever “sich Schwielen in die Hände arbeitet”
must be put under surveillance as a potential criminal. Furthermore, this passage
forms, as several critics have pointed out, a sarcastic echo of the crass opening of
Der Hessische Landbote (1834). There the same imagery is used to indict the ex-
ploiters of the Hessian peasants, the rich bourgeoisie and aristocracy, whereas in
Leonce and Lena Valerio’s aim is to penalise the labouring poor for their toil. As the
Hessische Landbote alleges: “Das Leben des Bauern ist ein langer Werktag; Fremde
verzehren seine Äcker vor seinen Augen, sein Leib ist eine Schwiele, sein Schweiß ist
das Salz auf dem Tische des Vornehmen” (Büchner 2002 II, 54 my emphasis). In
contrast to this radical imagery, Valerio’s language echoes and parodies bourgeois,
sentimental-religious expressions of sympathy with the labouring poor. Valerio’s
trite phrase of the working “Schwielen in die Hände” is but a faint echo of the
striking metaphor of the peasant’s whole body being one entire callus (“sein Leib
ist eine Schwiele”). Similarly weak is the biblical expression “im Schweiße seines
Angesichts” which is but a clichéd shadow of Büchner’s metaphor in Der Hessische
Landbote that casts the peasant’s sweat as the table salt of the rich (“das Salz auf
dem Tische des Vornehmen”). Pivotally, Valerio’s criminalisation of the labouring
peasants by decree follows the same pattern as the existing practice in the Great
Duchy of Hesse. As Büchner alleges, the Hessian State employs its laws to secure
the socioeconomic status quo by criminalising the labouring poor:

Dies Geld ist der Blutzehnte, der vom Leib des Volkes genommen wird. An
700,000 Menschen schwitzen, stöhnen und hungern dafür. In Namen des
Staates wird es erpreßt […] Der Staat also sind Alle, die Ordner im Staate
sind die Gesetze, durch welche das Wohl Aller gesichert wird, und die aus
dem <Willen> Aller hervorgehen sollen. Seht nun, was man im Großherzog-
tum aus dem Staat gemacht hat; seht was es heißt: die Ordnung im Staate
erhalten! 700,000 Menschen bezahlen dafür 6 Millionen, d.h sie werden
zur Ackergäulen und Pflugstieren gemacht, damit sie in Ordnung leben. In
Ordnung leben heißt hungern und geschunden werden. (Büchner 2002 II,
54; my emphasis, italics in the original)
174

This seminal passage that angrily exposes the socioeconomic ideology of the con-
stitutional monarchy has its cynical echoes both in Valerio’s idler’s paradise and
Camille’s hedonist utopia in Dantons Tod. While Valerio outlaws earning one’s
bread “im Schweiße seines Angesichts” with his decreed law, Camille, in a seem-
ingly liberal-humanist vein, maintains that the “Staatsform muß ein durchsichtiges
Gewand sein, das sich dicht an den Leib des Volkes schmiegt” (Büchner 2002 I, 15;
my emphasis). As the intertextual relation with Der Hessische Landbote suggests,
even Camille’s apparently very humane and socially responsible sounding vision
of a perfect state partakes in the exploitation of the physical labour of the poor.
Indeed, the transparent gown Camille envisages makes their suffering all the more
visible and visceral as it reveals their toiling bodies. From this perspective, it bor-
ders on sadism when he demands: “Jedes Schwellen der Adern, jedes Spannen der
Muskeln, jedes Zucken der Sehnen muß sich darin [im Gewand] abdrücken” (15).
Moreover, in all these passages Büchner refers to the contemporary Neo-Ba-
bouvist and early proletarian discourse on labour. For instance, both the passage
from Der Hessischen Landbote and, less obviously, Camille’s vision of a perfect
state allude to Blanqui’s imagery of the French state as a machine of exploitation
that pumps the lifeblood (“reinstes Blut”) out off the arteries (“Adern”) of the la-
bouring poor and transfuses it into the veins of the privileged. Blanqui’s machine
causes – so to speak – the swelling of the veins (“Schwellen der Adern”) from
Camille’s vision as well as the sucking of the “Blutzehnte” out of the blood vessels
of the 700,000 Hessian peasants: “Schreckliche Maschine, welche von 25 Mil-
lionen Bauern und 5 Millionen Handwerkern einen um den anderen zermalmt,
um ihr reinstes Blut abzuzapfen und in die Adern der Privilegirten umzugießen”
(Blanqui 2000, 200). The opportunistic fool Valerio condones this state machine
of exploitation juxtaposing the roles of criminal and victim. Valerio’s law, which he
decrees as “Staatsminister” “Valerio von Valerienthal,” criminalises the exploited
labourer, while absolving his exploiters from any crime. Moreover, Valerio’s cynical
allegations that both whoever “sich krank arbeitet, kriminalistisch strafbar ist” and
whoever is proud to live from his own labour poses a menace to human society re-
late to further contemporary socialist texts. For instance, they seem to constitute a
direct parody of the following passage from Schuster’s pamphlet “Gedanken eines
Republikaners”:

Arbeit ist […] die Grundbedingung jedes Eigenthumserwerbs, und jeder

arbeitskräftige Bürger, welcher Güter in Anspruch nimmt, deren Erwerb
nicht unmittelbar oder mittelbar aus der eigenen Thätigkeit herstammt, be-
geht einen Verstoß wider die Gesetze der Natur und einen strafbaren Ein-
 175
griff in die Eigenthumsrechte seines Nächsten. (Schuster 1977, 190-191;
emphasis in the original)

While Schuster claims that the only way to gain property without being a criminal
is through one’s labour, Valerio posits the opposite: a criminal is he who works
himself sick to provide for his sustenance.
Schuster is not the only one among the early German proletarian writers who
criminalises the exploitation of labour. In a similar form, allegations against the idle
profiteers of labour can be found in other pamphlets of the ‘Bund der Geächteten.’
For instance the widely distributed pamphlet “Erklärung der Menschen- und
Bürgerrechte” (1834), which forms a translation of a Neobavouvist text by Teste,
similarly accuses the idle non-producers of theft:

Art. 14. Arbeit ist eine Schuld, welche jeder arbeitskräftige Bürger der Ge-
sellschaft abtragen muß, Müssiggang soll gebrandmarkt werden als ein
Diebstahl und als eine unerschöpfliche Quelle schlechter Sitten (quoted in
Ruckhäberle 1977, 126; italics in the original).

As the professional idler Valerio declares, the labourer who prides himself that he
earns his living is mad and “der menschlichen Gesellschaft gefährlich.” By con-
trast, the pamphlet posits that labour is a debt (“Schuld”) that every person able
to work owes to society (“Gesellschaft”). In a drafted scene of the play Valerio goes
even further when he sarcastically parodies the allegations raised by the German
early proletarian movement that idling and living off the exploited labour of oth-
ers amounts to a crime. Pursuing a similar absurd line of argument as in his final
vision about the idler’s paradise, Valerio even intensifies his attacks against labour.
Employing the word “Schuft” which can both mean a villain and a criminal, he
claims that to earn a living through one’s labour not only amounts to a criminal
act, but also is deeply immoral:

Herr, es giebt nur drei [sic] Arten sein Geld auf eine menschliche Weise zu
verdienen, es finden, in der Lotterie gewinnen, erben oder in Gottes-Namen
stehlen […] und das behaupte ich, wer sein Geld auf eine andere Art erwirbt
ist ein Schuft. (Büchner 2002 I, 137)

In his seemingly absurd argument the fool Valerio declares that the only humane
manner of acquiring money is not to work for it, but obtain it by chance or rob-
bery. To earn it in any other way automatically makes one a scoundrel. This argu-
ment is highly ambiguous. On the one hand, one could argue that he sarcastically
176

parodies the assertions of the German early proletarian pamphleteers that gaining
goods in any other way than through one’s own labour is immoral. On the other,
his ironic words show an astute awareness that acquiring money in any other way,
for example by inheriting it, winning it in the lottery,32 or profiting from exploited
proletarian labour (i.e. stealing the surplus value from the labourers), is a deeply
inhumane, unethical, and ultimately criminal act: it amounts to stealing. Finally,
these lines also form an indictment of a society that does not permit the poor to
earn their living by working since proletarian labour is highly exploited and alien-
ated.
As this contextualisation of Valerio’s speech with the early proletarian discourse
reveals, Büchner criticises both the current socioeconomic system and the sarcastic
aristocratic-bourgeois attitude towards the socioeconomic situation of the lower
classes that his fool exhibits in a satirically exaggerated manner. Its biting satire
also extends to Heine’s vision in Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in
Deutschland that is seen as complicit with the ruling socio-exploitative ideology. In
the ending of Leonce and Lena Valerio most definitely is not Büchner’s mouthpiece.
In contrast to Heine who invokes a Shakespearean fool figure in his manifesto to
defend sensualism against its ascetic and self-declared, virtuous, Jacobin enemies,33
Valerio functions as a pragmatic and callously opportunist picaro who realises his
chance of climbing the social ladder. He does this even at the cost of cementing the
socially unjust system. Büchner does not only reveal Valerio’s hypocrisy, but fur-
thermore shows how his contemptuous attitude towards labour and the labourers
mirrors the mindset of large parts of the contemporary aristocracy and bourgeoisie.
When Valerio attempts to ridicule the early proletarian discourse that indicts the

32 It is possible that Valerio here echoes and juxtaposes an allegation made by the Neo-Babouvist
Blanqui in his famous defence speech at his trial in January 1832. In it he exposes the lottery
as one of the pernicious means to exploit the French proletarians and to rob them of the fruits
of their labour: “Ich übergehe die Salzauflagen, die Loterie, das Tabakmonopol – mit einem
Wort, jenes unentwirrbare Netz […], das den Proletair umschlingt, alle seine Glieder fesselt und
auszehrt. Die Bemerkung mag hinreichen, […] daß die Müßigen auf eine schändliche Weise die
arbeitenden Massen berauben (Blanqui 1987, 96; italics in the original)
33 “Seid deshalb nicht ungehalten, ihr tugendhaften Republikaner! Auf eure zensorische Vorwürfe
entgegnen wir euch, was schon ein Narr des Shakespeare sagte: ‘Meinst du, weil du tugendhaft
bist, solle es auf dieser Erde keine angenehmen Torten und keinen süßen Sekt mehr geben?’“
(Heine 1997 III, 570) The fool figure that Heine here quotes is Sir Toby from Twelfth Night:
Or What You Will with his anti-Puritan retort: “Dost thou think because thou art virtuous there
shall be no more cakes and ales?” (II, 2; ll. 103-104) In the German translation by August Wil-
helm Schlegel these lines read as follows: “Vermeinest du, weil du tugendhaft seiest, solle es in
der Welt keine Torten und keinen Wein mehr geben?” Quoting from memory, Heine changes
wine to sweet sparkling wine, thus adding a more luxurious touch.
 177

exploitation of labour, his sarcasm turns against himself. Büchner suggests that
his sensualist utopia, that repudiates the social responsibility of the individual and
propagates unbridled hedonism, instead forms an idealised version of the dysto-
pian state of contemporary society.
Moreover, this biting critique extends to Heine’s programme of sensual lib-
eration through the intertextual echoes. It seems untenable to me to argue, as for
instance Burghard Dedner claims, that in the guise of a sensualist utopia Büchner
affirms Heine’s utopian “Manifest des Hedonismus” when in a socio-revolutionary
move he suspends “das Ethos und die Zwänge der Arbeitsgesellschaft” (cf. 2001,
170). Nor does Heine’s (nor Valerio’s or Camille’s vision), “ope[n] up the perspec-
tive of luxury for the whole of humanity” (Holmes 1995b, 101), but merely for a
privileged few. On a rhetorical level this elitism is mirrored by Valerio’s, Camille’s,
and Heine’s similar use of the first person plural when they are sketching their re-
spective earthly paradise. Valerio declares, “dann legen wir uns in den Schatten und
bitten Gott um Makkaroni […].” Camille demands: “Wir wollen nackte Göttinnen
[…], while Heine maintains: “Wir wollen keine Sanskülotten sein, keine frugale
Bürger, […] wir verlangen Nektar und Ambrosia [...].” As argued earlier, “wir”
begs the question to whom it refers and which social classes are to be included in
it. The answer is that in all cases this is most likely the bourgeoisie while the sweaty
labouring proletarians will be excluded from it.
Viewed from this angle, it becomes even questionable whether the following as-
sertion from Heine’s manifesto, that misery destroys or debases the body and thus
also destroys the spirit, carries the pronounced radical “soziale Dimension” which
Manfred Windfuhr observes (cf. 2004, 110):

Wir befördern das Wohlsein der Materie, das materielle Glück der Völker,
nicht weil wir gleich den Materialisten den Geist mißachten, sondern weil
wir wissen, daß die Göttlichkeit des Menschen sich auch in seiner leiblichen
Erscheinung kund gibt, und das Elend den Leib, das Bild Gottes, zerstört
oder aviliert, und der Geist dadurch ebenfalls zu Grunde geht. (Heine 1997
III, 570)

Rather than referring to the social misery caused by the exploitation of labour, the
whole passage relates closely to Heine’s sensualist version of pantheism as the reli-
gious imagery and vocabulary emphasises (“Geist,” “Göttlichkeit,” “Bild Gottes,”
“kund gibt”). “Elend” might even be better translated here as “unhappiness” rather
“misery”, with its connotations of material suffering. Even the goal to promote
“das Wohlsein der Materie, das materielle Glück” appears to refer more to the
178

religious-philosophical debate on the mind-body dualism and the dichotomy of

spirit and matter rather than representing a summons to change the social system
so that the whole of humanity will be able to provide for its material needs. Seen
in this light, Windfuhr’s claim that Heine here calls for an end to “die Ausbeutung
der Bevölkerungsmehrheit durch eine Minderheit” (2004, 110) does not seem to
be very compelling. Seen within the contemporary social context, Heine’s apothe-
osis of the body rings at least as hollow as Valerio’s demand for “klassische Leiber
und eine komm[o]de Religion!” (Büchner 2002 I, 129) As the contrast with the
preceding scene in Büchner’s play makes evident, in which the emaciated peasants
are being ordered to line up beside the road, “wohlgenährt und mit zufriedenen
Gesichtern” (III, 2; 121), such concerns that Valerio and Heine raise are worries
about luxury from a privileged minority.
One might even argue that Heine refers in this passage less to the existential cri-
sis of an exploited proletariat struggling to survive than to the spiritual deprivation
of the bourgeoisie that undergoes a social identity crisis as it takes over the socio-
economic role of the ruling class from the aristocracy. Franz Schüppen convinc-
ingly suggests in one of the few dissident readings of Zur Geschichte der Religion
und Philosophie that this essay – as Heine’s “ideologisches Hauptwerk” – promotes
“die neue sensualistische Diesseitsphilosophie” which must be seen as part of the
wider endeavour by bourgeois intellectuals to come to terms with the spiritual and
social crisis of this class (cf. 1998, 531). This claim places him into sharp opposi-
tion to Takanori Teraoka who paradoxically maintains that Heine’s vision, in spite
of its “anscheinend bourgeoisen Luxuriosität” (2006, 104), must still be consid-
ered as a genuine “Manifest einer proletarischen Revolution.” (102). Especially
considering Büchner’s ironic intertextual references to Heine’s manifesto, I would
assert that its celebration of luxury is more than seemingly bourgeois. The call for
“Purpurmäntel” (Heine 1997 III, 570) constitutes a bourgeois appropriation of
an aristocratically royal insignia. In terms of both readership and social relevance,
the class which Heine’s sensual manifesto addresses is the bourgeoisie and not the
proletariat. Concerned with pressing material worries, the latter is unlikely to ap-
preciate the more refined joys of civilisation and culture, a faculty that in Heine’s
epicurean ideology only makes a person a full human being. To find a place in
Heine’s paradise, as becomes even clearer in an earlier draft version of the mani-
festo, it is essential to have first acquired an aesthetic sensibility for canonical works
of art. Affirming the bourgeois ideology of the aesthetic, Heine asserts that his
sensualist utopia is only open to those who “hören gerne die Melodien der Nachti-
gall und des Rossini” and “lieben das schöne Glück und das tizianische Fleisch”
(Heine 1973 ff. XIII.1, 456). For these reasons I would assert that Heine’s vision
 179

of sensualist liberation does not constitute a programme of social revolution, as nu-

merous critics have argued. It does not envisage radical socioeconomic change and
conspicuously excludes the working classes and their immediate material needs.
Unless a magical transformation should occur, the ‘uncivilised’ proletarians will
never acquire full membership in his version of a Hellenistic Elysium on earth. The
latter forms a universal community of the cultured with an aesthetic sensibility,
“eine Demokratie gleichherrlicher, gleichheiliger, gleichbeseligter Götter,” which
is essentially an exclusively bourgeois social utopia.34 It does not envisage a social
democracy in which the right for absolute universal political and social equality
(irrespective of class), education, culture, and aesthetic sensibilities is paramount.
It will not mark the “radikal sociale und politische Emanzipation der arbeitenden
Klassen” that Schuster demands, but rather cement the existing alienated and ex-
ploitative labour process of the “Gütersklaventhums,” which marks the “Zustand
des gezwungenen Verzichts auf den Genuß der Früchte des eigenen Werks, diese
gewaltsame Aufdrängung eines arbeitslosen Schmarotzerthums, sich nährend von
den Produkten fremder Arbeitskraft, und schwelgend in dem erpreßten Gute
fremder Entbehrung” (Schuster 1977, 185-186).

3.2.2 Prophesying the Social Revolution: Heine as a Precursor to Marx?

Despite the pronounced liberal ideology of Heine’s scenario of sensual revolution,

there exists a conspicuous tendency to cast it as a precursor of Marx’s concept of
social revolution. For instance Manfred Windfuhr has argued that Heine, in Zur
Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland, anticipates the communist
demand to end exploitation, a conviction that will enable Heine later to accept
the “Programm der Kommunisten” in spite of his fears for bourgeois culture (cf.
2004, 110). Stathis Kouvelakis regards Heine as a post-Hegelian thinker who – to
a certain degree – anticipated Marx’s revolutionary theory (see 2003, 44-120).
Gerhard Höhn goes even as far as to claim that Marx derived his concept of prole-
tarian social revolution from Heine, in particular from this essay on the history of
34 One might argue that Heine here partakes in the liberal bourgeois ideological notion of culture
as a “universal community” which can be located “only in some few chosen circles,” as Terry
Eagleton finds it paradigmatically expressed in Schiller’s Briefe über die ästhetische Erziehung des
Menschen (1795-1796) (cf. Eagleton 1990, 109). In contrast to the proletariat, in the case of
the bourgeoisie, there is hope for Heine that the philistine bourgeoisie of today will overcome
its cultural and spiritual impoverishment and mature into a class of human beings worthy of
Heine’s social utopia.
180

German religion and philosophy. He maintains that Marx’s notion of the radical
revolution leading to universal emancipation corresponds with “Heines Beharren
auf einer sozialen Revolution mit allgemeiner Emanzipation.” Heine, he claims,
was the first to develop this notion in this essay. Höhn insists in particular that his
scenario of the German radical philosophical revolution depicted in the conclud-
ing pages of Heine’s essay amounts to “einer gesellschaftlichen Umwälzung,” as
Marx depicts it. Thus, he maintains, it anticipates Marx’s radical revolution as he
develops it in the “Einleitung Zur Kritik zur Hegel’schen Rechts-Philosophie” (1844)
(Höhn 2004, 130):35

Unsere philosophische Revolution ist beendigt. Hegel hat ihren großen

Kreis geschlossen. […] Die deutsche Philosophie ist eine wichtige das gan-
ze Menschengeschlecht betreffende Angelegenheit, und erst die spätesten
Enkel werden darüber entscheiden können, ob wir dafür zu tadeln oder zu
loben sind, daß wir erst unsere Philosophie und hernach unsere Revolution
ausarbeiteten. [...] Durch diese Doktrinen haben sich revolutionäre Kräfte
gebildet, die nur des Tages harren, wo sie hervorbrechen und die Welt mit
Entsetzen und Bewunderung erfüllen können. [...] Es werden bewaffnete
Fichtianer auf den Schauplatz treten, die in ihrem Willens-Fanatismus, we-
der durch Furcht noch durch Eigennutz zu bändigen sind; denn sie leben
im Geist, sie trotzen der Materie, gleich den ersten Christen [...] ja, solche
Transzendental-Idealisten wären bei einer gesellschaftlichen Umwälzung so-
gar noch unbeugsamer als die ersten Christen [...]. Lächelt nicht über den
Phantasten, der im Reiche der Erscheinungen dieselbe Revolution erwarten,
die im Gebiete des Geistes stattgefunden. Der Gedanke geht der Tat voraus,
wie der Blitz dem Donner. [...] Es wird ein Stück aufgeführt werden in
Deutschland, wogegen die französische Revolution nur wie eine harmlose
Idylle erscheinen möchte. (Heine 1997 III, 636, 638-640)

Indeed, Höhn raises a key point when he maintains that Heine’s essay forms a
crucial intertext for Marx’s introduction (which I have analysed in more detail in
chapter 1). Not only does Marx similarly claim – as Höhn accurately highlights
(2004, 130) – that for Germany “ist die Kritik der Religion im Wesentlichen been-
digt” (MEGA II, 170; Marx’s emphasis), but he also stresses the world-historical

35 Höhn seems to take this idea from a very insightful talk by Jean Pierre Lefebvre. In it, Lefebvre
discusses the question “eines möglichen reziproken Einflusses” of Marx and Heine (1973, 41;
Lefebvre’s emphasis). This places him in contrast to Höhn who identifies a largely one-direc-
tional influence of Heine on the early Marx. Providing concrete intertextual evidence, Lefebvre
further suggests that not only Marx but also Engels engaged with Heine’s essay on German
religion and philosophy (see 1973, 46).
 181

role of German philosophy. Both regard it as a potentially revolutionary force. Al-

though already critical of German idealism (even if considerably less than later in
Die deutsche Ideologie), Marx still emphasises that the “deutsche Rechts- und Staat-
sphilosophie ist die einzige mit der officiellen modernen Gegenwart al pari stehende
deutsche Geschichte” (MEGA II, 175; Marx’s emphasis). Both also highlight the
discrepancy between advanced German theory and the anachronistic political and
social German status quo. Yet, while Marx and Heine both build upon idealist
philosophy in their respective essays, Marx sharply criticises Heine’s idealist tenet
that there could ever exist a straightforward, causal relationship between ideas or
thought and social change. Unlike for Heine, for Marx a ‘philosophical revolution’
will not lead to a social revolution if it lacks a material basis:36

Einer radikalen deutschen Revolution scheint indessen eine Hauptschwierig-

keit entgegen zu stehen. Die Revolutionen bedürfen nämlich eines passiven
Elementes, einer materiellen Grundlage. Die Theorie wird in einem Volke
immer nur so weit verwirklicht, als sie die Verwirklichung seiner Bedürf-
nisse ist. Wird nun dem ungeheuren Zwiespalt zwischen den Forderungen
des deutschen Gedankens und den Antworten der deutschen Wirklichkeit
derselbe Zwiespalt der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft mit dem Staat und mit
sich selbst entsprechen? Werden die theoretischen Bedürfnisse unmittelbar
praktische Bedürfnisse sein? Es genügt nicht, daß der Gedanke zur Verwirk-
lichung drängt, die Wirklichkeit muß sich selbst zum Gedanken drängen.
(MEGA II, 178; Marx’s emphasis)

Directly alluding to Heine’s assertion from his philosophy essay that “der Gedanke
geht der Tat voraus, wie der Blitz dem Donner,” Marx in one of his characteristic
chiastic reversals transforms this causal, one-directional relationship of thought
and action into a dialectical one: “Es genügt nicht, daß der Gedanke zur Verwirkli-
chung drängt, die Wirklichkeit muß sich selbst zum Gedanken drängen.” Theoret-
ical, philosophical ideas can contribute merely to material, social change if material
reality in turn informs and shapes such theory. However, in the contemporary
German situation Marx detects an immense gulf, “einen ungeheuren Zwiespalt,”
between thought and reality. To bridge the gulf between revolutionary theory and
thought, Marx maintains, it is vital that theory bears an immediate relevance to
the needs of the people, which must manifest themselves directly in theoretical

36 Adorno also raises doubt concerning the thesis that Heine posed a major ideological influence
on the early Marx: “Man mag bezweifeln, ob er [Heine] so stark den frühen Marx beeinflußte,
wie manche junge Soziologen es wollen. Politisch gesehen war Heine ein unsicherer Geselle:
auch des Sozialismus” (1958, 148).
182

demands. Only when this occurs, Marx asserts, will the people – without whom
any revolutionary action remains illusionary – become aware of their capability to
transform society, rise up, and instigate a radical social revolution. As pointed out
earlier, in spite of its remaining idealism, this essay thus marks a theoretical mile-
stone in Marx’s move towards social revolution.
Even though Heine also satirically highlights this gulf between German theory
and reality, this double bind of revolutionary theory to both the material reality of
the masses and their consciousness is utterly absent in Heine’s scenario of a ‘philo-
sophical revolution.’ As Heine presents it, this revolution constitutes a straightfor-
ward materialisation of German idealist philosophy. Fuelled by idealist thought,
these martial philosophers defy matter, “trotzen der Materie.” Unlike in Marx’s sce-
nario, the theory of revolution is not conditioned by material realities but Heine’s
“Transzendental-Idealisten” transcend them and shape the material reality accord-
ing to their idealists philosophy.
Most importantly, however, the people – let alone the proletariat – do not
feature as an actively revolutionary social group at all. The question of which role
the proletariat will play in a future revolution is the moot point that divides Marx’s
philosophy of revolution from Heine’s. As I have pointed out, already at that stage
Marx regards the proletarian social revolution as the only way to achieve human
emancipation and end alienation, even though in the introduction to the critique
of Hegel’s philosophy of right the proletariat still features largely as an abstract
entity rather than a concrete social force. Höhn contends that Heine reached such
a position shortly after Marx, and later came to share Marx’s unequivocal commit-
ment to proletarian social revolution. Nevertheless he concedes that Heine in Zur
Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie – in contrast to Marx in his introduction –
did not yet assign the main role in the social revolution to the proletariat. By con-
trast, Jean Pierre Lefebvre contends that Heine never managed to resolve the con-
tradictions in socio-political and revolutionary ideology, “weil ihm die politische
Perspektive der proletarischen Revolution fehlte” (1973, 44).
Despite such weighty counter-arguments, Höhn insists that Heine changed
his mind on this decisive aspect of proletarian revolution. As evidence he cites a
fragmentary essay, the so-called Briefe über Deutschland (1844), which was writ-
ten in the same year as Marx’s preface to his critique of Hegel’s philosophy of
law. He maintains that in it Heine endorses proletarian social revolution at least
as strongly as Marx (2004, 130 & 450). However, this assertion is problematic,
as a brief intertextual comparison will show. Referring to his sensualist manifesto
from his earlier essay on the history of German religion and philosophy, Heine
 183

in the Briefe über Deutschland strongly insists that bourgeois intellectuals such as
philosophers must not only initiate and lead the revolutions of the future, but also
control and limit the proletariat’s role in it. To be more precise, he casts himself as
such a philosophical-intellectual leader of the proletariat, while at the same time
he boasts that he was the first to prophesy the future ‘proletarian’ revolution almost
tens years earlier:

Mit dem Umsturz der alten Glaubensdoktrinen ist auch die ältere Moral
entwurzelt. [...] Die Vernichtung des Glaubens an dem Himmel hat nicht
bloß eine moralische, sondern auch eine politische Wichtigkeit: die Massen
tragen nicht mehr mit christlicher Geduld ihr irdisches Elend, und lech-
zen nach Glückseligkeit auf Erden. Der Kommunismus ist eine natürliche
Folge dieser veränderten Weltanschauung, und er verbreitet sich über ganz
Deutschland. Es ist eine ebenso natürliche Folge, daß die Proletarier in ihrem
Ankampf an das Bestehende die fortgeschrittensten Geister, die Philosophen
der großen Schule, als Führer besitzen; diese gehen über von der Doktrin zur
Tat, dem letzten Zweck alles Denkens, und formulieren das Programm. Wie
lautet es? Ich habe es längst geträumt und ausgesprochen: “Wir wollen keine
Sanskülotten sein, keine frugale Bürger [...]” Diese Worte stehen in meinem
Buche “De l’Allemagne”, wo ich bestimmt vorausgesagt habe, die politische
Revolution der Deutschen aus jener Philosophie hervorgehen wird, deren
Systeme man so oft als eitel Scholastik verschrien. (Heine 1997 V, 197-198;
my emphasis)

Höhn regards this passage as proof that Heine had by then fully reached Marx’s
avant-garde position on the need for a proletarian social revolution (see 2004,
450). This claim is untenable, first because Heine here explicitly terms the future
German revolution a “politische Revolution.” By contrast, Marx in the “Einleitung
Zur Kritik der Hegel’schen Rechts-Philosophie” from the same year 1844 is adamant
that a merely political revolution will only achieve illusory change in Germany.37
Second, already in this essay Marx assigns a much more important and active role
to the proletariat in the future German revolution than Heine ever does. This be-
comes evident if one looks closely at the corresponding passage in the “Einleitung”
to which Höhn refers to back up his claim. Unlike Heine in his essay on German
religion and philosophy and his Briefe über Deutschland, Marx does not call for
bourgeois intellectuals such as philosophers to act as leaders and guardians of the

37 “Nicht die radicale Revolution ist ein utopischer Traum für Deutschland, nicht die allgemein
menschliche Emancipation, sondern vielmehr die theilweise, die nur politische Revolution, die
Revolution, welche die Pfeiler des Hauses stehen läßt” (MEGA II, 179; Marx’s emphasis).
184

proletariat, but strongly emphasises that in Germany no class that forms part of
civil society can lead this radical revolution:

In Deutschland [...], wo das praktische Leben ebenso geistlos, als das geistige
Leben unpraktisch ist, hat keine Klasse der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft das
Bedürfniß und die Fähigkeit der allgemeinen Emancipation, bis sie nicht
durch ihre unmittelbare Lage, durch die materielle Nothwendigkeit, durch
ihre Ketten selbst dazu gezwungen wird. (MEGA II, 181: Marx’s emphasis)

In contrast to Heine’s idealist interpretation of communism, Marx in his more

materialist conception insists that the proletariat alone, out of all social factions,
is capable of initiating the radical social revolution. Its material circumstances, its
exclusion from civil society, its extreme exploitation, and its status as “einer Klasse
mit radikalen Ketten, einer Klasse der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft, welche keine
Klasse der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft ist” enable it to act out its role as the revo-
lutionary avant-garde (cf. MEGA II, 181; Marx’s emphasis). The goal of Marx’s
projected revolution is nothing short of “die Aufhebung des Proletariats” (183) and
the end of alienation per se, which is marked by a reversal of the “völlige Verlust des
Menschen” and “völlige Wiedergewinnung des Menschen” (183). To me this seems a
considerably more radical social transformation than to merely grant to the masses
“das Streben nach Glückseligkeit auf Erden,” which sounds more like a socially
extended version of the liberal ‘pursuit of happiness’ enshrined in the American
Declaration of Independence than a demand for proletarian social revolution.
Most importantly, for the proletariat to realise its revolutionary potential, it
must gain consciousness of its social situation. Only an active form of acquiring
social self-awareness, Marx insists, and not bourgeois didactic lessons will enable
the proletariat to become such a radical socio-revolutionary force. For this pur-
pose, it will employ and adapt the mental weapons that German philosophy and
the critique of it have provided for its own purposes. Such a perspective differs
sharply from Heine’s that grants to the proletarians merely a semiconscious thirst
for earthly happiness and assigns the active role to the bourgeois intellectuals who
will lead them towards their emancipation. Moreover, Marx’s socio-revolutionary
demand that the abolition of private property constitutes a vital step in the eman-
cipation of the propertyless proletariat is nowhere endorsed in Heine’s 1830s or
1840s writings. The proletariat with its enforced lack of property negates a society
that is solely built upon the fetishisation of private property, since it epitomises the
ultimate negation of private property. As such, it also harbours the seeds for the
future socio-revolutionary dissolution of that society:
 185
Wenn das Proletariat die Auflösung der bisherigen Weltordnung verkündet,
so spricht es nur das Geheimniß seines eigenen Daseins aus, denn es ist die
faktische Auflösung dieser Weltordnung. Wenn das Proletariat die Negation
des Privateigenthums verlangt, so erhebt es nur Prinzip der Gesellschaft, was
die Gesellschaft zu seinem Princip erhoben hat, was in ihm als negatives
Resultat der Gesellschaft schon ohne sein Zuthun verkörpert ist. [...] Wie
die die Philosophie im Proletariat ihre materiellen, so findet das Proletariat
in der Philosophie seine geistigen Waffen und sobald der Blitz des Gedan-
kens gründlich in diesen naiven Volksboden eingeschlagen ist, wird sich die
Emancipation der Deutschen zu Menschen vollziehn. [...] Die Emancipation
des Deutschen ist die Emancipation des Menschen. Der Kopf dieser Emanci-
pation ist die Philosophie, ihr Herz das Proletariat. Die Philosophie kann
sich nicht verwirklichen ohne die Aufhebung des Proletariats, das Prole-
tariat kann sich nicht aufheben ohne die Verwirklichung der Philosophie.
(MEGA II, 182-183; Marx’s emphasis)

Marx here echoes images and key terms from Heine’s essay Zur Geschichte der
Religion und Philosophie and at the same time significantly alters their ideological
meaning. As Kouvelakis explains Marx often employs the “stylistic and discursive
apparatus […] provided by Heine” (2003, 318), but alters its ideological implica-
tions. For instance, he replaces Heine’s “bewaffnete Fichtianer” which only live “im
Geist” (cf. 1997 III, 638) with “geistigen Waffen” of the proletariat, as which the
proletariat will use German philosophy. Heine’s revolutionary prophecy that he ut-
ters in the simile, “[d]er Gedanke geht der Tat voraus, wie der Blitz dem Donner”
(639) was changed in Marx’s text to the metaphor “der Blitz des Gedankens” that
will form a sort of catalyst for proletarian revolutionary action. When this flash
strikes the masses, “den naiven Volksboden,” Marx seems convinced, then the pro-
letariat will start the social revolution. While this terms carries overtones of intel-
lectual elitism, or even snobbery, the role that Marx assigns to the proletariat in this
transformation is nothing short of heroic. It is this class that will not emancipate
itself but also all the other classes by radically altering the socioeconomic basis of
society, as Marx will outline in the “Randglossen” and in the “Ökonomisch-Phi-
losophischen Manuskripte.” While in the “Einleitung” philosophy still forms the
intellectual driving force of socio-revolutionary emancipation, its mind and head,
the material driving force is the proletariat, its heart; a residually idealist and so-
cially elitist position that Marx, however, will soon abandon in lieu of a scenario of
the revolutionary self-emancipation of the proletariat (as pointed out in chapter 1).
By contrast, Heine casts the philosopher-poet as the catalyst for revolutionary
action and largely omits the masses from the equation. The transformative ideas of
186

the philosopher-poet and revolutionary action are portrayed as immediately linked

as lightning and thunder, thus detracting from the fact that the masses always form
the major actor in any revolution. Unlike Marx, in Heine’s conception of “social
revolution,” the bourgeois intellectuals, “die Philosophen der großen Schule,” take
on the active role in it rather than the proletariat. In sharp contrast to Marx, for
Heine the philosophers are the ones who will prophesy and instigate the social
revolution since they are the only social group that is able to gain a full awareness
of the contemporary social crisis. Thus, they must not only take upon themselves
the task of drawing up its programme, but also of putting it into practice: “diese
[i.e. the philosophers] gehen über von der Doktrin zur Tat, dem letzten Zweck
alles Denkens.”
What Marx criticises through his intertextual references to Heine’s essay is the
marginalisation of the proletariat in his concept of ‘social’ revolution. Contrary
to Heine’s paradoxical notion of a social revolution without the proletariat, in
Marx’s concept of social revolution it is the proletariat that has to play a fully active
revolutionary role. Not bourgeois intellectuals, but revolutionary proletarians are
to put philosophy into practice. When they stand up against their exploiters, they
themselves become practical social philosophers. It is only through this theoretical-
practical proletarian social revolution that philosophy will be reified and socially
relevant: a move beyond mere egotistical speculation and navel-gazing.
Heine, in his understanding of social revolution, is limited to exactly the same
bourgeois ideological cul-de-sac of Hegelian idealism which Marx denounces
throughout his 1844 writings: that ideas could effect material change. This no-
tion is not limited to his essay but also extends into his lyrical works. One might
even argue that often when Heine talks of social revolution, he means a socio-
philosophical revolution instigated by bourgeois intellectuals that largely excludes
the masses, i.e. the proletariat as the protagonists of their own liberation. He rhe-
torically expresses this social exclusion, perhaps more famously than in any other
poem, in Caput I of Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen (1844). Switching from the
singular personal pronoun ‘I’ to the collective ‘we,’ the persona of the poet under-
takes the task of gaining awareness of the ideological mechanism of oppression and
exploitation in lieu of the masses. The bourgeois poet is speaking for the masses
and is fashioning himself as the prophet of social revolution.38 He alone devises its

38 For a discussion of Heine’s self-fashioning as the prophet of revolution, see for instance Bier-
wirth 1995, 311-319. For an attempt to structure Heine’s prophetic scenarios, see Windfuhr
2004. He also engages with the socio-political scenario (109-114). While Windfuhr rightly
foregrounds Heine’s “Neigung zur Selbsterhebung” during the 1830s, he maintains that in the
1840s this tendency gives way to “stärker sozialen Orientierung” (cf. 114). I would contest this
 187

programme in his poem and thus assigns to the proletariat “eine subalterne Rolle,”
as Terence M. Holmes highlights (cf. 1998, 550):

Ein neues Lied, ein besseres Lied,

O Freunde, will ich Euch dichten!
Wir wollen hier auf Erden schon
Das Himmelreich errichten.

Wir wollen auf Erden glücklich sein,

Und wollen nicht mehr darben;
Verschlemmen soll nicht der faule Bauch
Was fleißige Hände erwarben. (ll. 33-40; Heine 1997 IV, 578; my emphasis)

In spite of flirting with the concept of social revolution and even communism,39
Heine, throughout his life, remained a supporter of a liberal socio-political order.
Highly conscious – and also extremely frightened – of the socio-revolutionary po-
tential of the proletariat, he advocated political equality yet remained adamantly
opposed to absolute social equality, a fact that the historian Walter Grab recognises
much more accurately than most literary critics:

Bei aller Einsicht in die Notwendigkeit, den Volksmassen eine lebenswerte

Existenz zu sichern, war Heine nicht geneigt, seinen liberalen Freiheitsbe-
griff auf dem Altar der sozialen Gleichheit zu opfern. Trotz seines Abscheus
vor der Heuchelei und Bigotterie der herrschenden Plutokratie distanzierte
er sich vor [sic] den aufbegehrenden Massen. (Grab 1992, 228)

This liberal attitude towards the proletariat – sympathy for the suffering masses on
the one hand and fear of the rebellious masses on the other – determines Heine’s
stance towards proletarian revolution. His anxieties manifest themselves in an of-
ten very negative image of the proletariat. As Terence Holmes emphasises, the
most pertinent counter-argument against regarding Heine’s sensualist utopia as a
manifesto of proletarian revolution lies in Heine’s disparaging attitude towards the

claim with the argument that by stylising himself as the poetic prophet of a social revolution, he
elevates himself even further.
39 For Heine’s relationship to socialism, communism, and Marxism see for instance Windfuhr
1972, 19-23, Lefebvre 1973, Bodi 1979, Schieder 1981, Briegleb 1986, 71-104, Boldt 1990,
Grab 1992, 211-232, and Höhn 2004, 127-130. While critical discourse has often investigated
Heine’s stance towards Saint-Simonism, as well as less frequently his attitude towards Marxism
and Neo-Babouvism, a comprehensive study does not exist that focuses on Heine’s ideological
stance on all the various contemporary socialist factions.
188

proletariat.40 He asserts that one of the main reasons that Heine’s sensualist pro-
gramme of social revolution remains so unconvincing lies in his negative portrayal
of the working class, which I will investigate in the following subsection.

3.2.3 “Wie wilde Tiere […] fiel das Volk über sie herüber”: Images of Proletar-
ian Savagery

This subsection will align Heine’s largely negative portrayal of the proletariat with
the wider contemporary discourse on the proletarians as Europe’s indigenous bar-
barians and savages. As I will argue, such a negative image of the proletariat force-
fully conjures up the spectre of social revolution and thus contributes to reinforce
Heine’s negative attitude towards proletarian revolution.
Heine depicts the proletariat within a dichotomy that had by then become a
trope in the depiction of non-European, ‘primitive’ people: the twin image of the
noble/ignoble savage. This portrayal of proletarians emerges very prominently, for
instance, in Heine’s collection of articles from the 1830s and 1840s. While he
often equates proletarians with brute savages, there is at least one instance when,
in Heine’s oeuvre, he conjures up the more ambivalent image of the noble sav-
age. In Französische Zustände (1833), Heine explicitly likens the workers to fierce
but noble savages as he is describing the failed insurrection on 5-6 June 1832 (in
“Tagesbericht” of 6 June 1832). In spite of their wild and menacing nature, they
appear to show unconditional love and adoration for their champion General La-
fayette, the veteran hero of three bourgeois revolutions (the American, the French,
and July Revolution). Spectacularly displaying their devotion to him, as their “al-
ten treuesten Freund,” they even unharness the horses of Lafayette’s carriage and
pull him through Paris “mit eigenen Händen” (cf. Heine 1997 III, 241). However,
even this noble gesture betrays their perceived semi-human status, as it likens them
to the horses, the animals that they replace.41 Furthermore, these noble savages
ironically endanger the life of the general who has proved their greatest benefac-
40 “Gerade Heines abschätzige Schilderung des proletarischen Lebens macht die Motivierung der
Arbeiterklasse durch seine sensualistische Staatsutopie so unwahrscheinlich.” (Holmes 1998,
546)
41 According to a British 1838 propaganda account that celebrated the abolition of slavery and ap-
prenticeship (a four-year transition period during which the ex-slaves were forced to work under
for another four years under slavery-like conditions), the ‘grateful’ Jamaican ex-slaves performed
the same gesture as the Parisian workers, unharnessing the horses of the Governor’s coach and
pulling it along: “a body of the most Athletic of the late apprentices surrounded the Carriage
 189

tor, since their deed excites the already enthusiastic masses even further. In wild
ecstasy, some of the workers uproot trees and carry them like club-wielding savages
(“wie Wilde”) and the masses, in their frenzy, threaten to overturn the carriage.
Moreover, the chaos that ensues purportedly provides some rabble-rousers with the
opportunity to shoot at Lafayette’s carriage:

[...] als Lafayette, ermüdet von dem vierstündigen Wege, sich in einen Fi-
aker setzte, hat das Volk die Pferde desselben ausgespannt und seinen al-
ten treuesten Freund, mit eigenen Händen, unter ungeheurem Beifallsruf,
über die Boulevards gezogen. Viele Ouvriers hatten junge Bäume aus der
Erde gerissen und liefen damit, wie Wilde, neben dem Wagen, der in jedem
Augenblick bedroht schien, durch das ungefüge Menschengedränge umge-
stürzt zu werden. Es sollen zwei Schüsse den Wagen getroffen haben. (Heine
1997 III, 241)

This scene seems to suggest that even the authority of the revolutionary patriarch
Lafayette does not suffice to keep his wild, childlike lower-class supporters under
control. The alleged shots, which mark the start of a failed insurrection, drastically
drive home the danger that the unruly masses pose. As it warns how part of the
proletariat might even turn against those bourgeois revolutionary leaders it used
to venerate, such as Lafayette, the text reminds Heine’s bourgeois readers of how
severe a threat these menacingly savage proletarians constitute to the existence of
bourgeoisie. The initial image of proletarians as faithful and almost noble savages
is strongly undercut by the unruly behaviour of the savage proletarians and the
rampaging crowd, not to mention the alleged shots at Lafayette. Even at the very
moment when they seem to pay homage to the bourgeoisie’s rule, by celebrating
one of its most eminent leaders, rebellion is lurking underneath this façade.
Such negative portrayal of proletarians as ferocious animal-like savages evokes
the trope of the barbarian rather than the one of the noble savage to which it
corresponds. According to Urs Bitterli, the image of the barbarian is intimately
related to the European cliché of the noble savage, “dem ins Positive gewendeten
Spiegelbild des Barbaren” (1976, 374). I would maintain that there exists a similar
relationship regarding the twin image of the noble and the barbarian proletarian,
with the crucial difference that the image of the noble savage is to be found much
more frequently in the 18th- and 19th-century discourses on non-European people

[…] and, removed the horses and dragged them [his Excellency and suite] along to the scenes of
interesting conviviality in the midst of enthusiastic huzzas” (Quoted in Wood 2010, 118).
190

than the corresponding one in the contemporary discourse on workers.42 Overall,

the figure of the savage, barbarian proletarian occupies a much more prominent
place in the contemporary liberal bourgeois discourse.
Perhaps most notoriously in the contemporary context, the liberal Saint Marc-
Girardin conjures up this spectre of the barbarian proletarian masses in the in-
fluential Journal des Débats (8 December 1831) in an article that – as Jeremy D.
Popkin claims – “is one of the most famous newspaper articles ever printed in
France” (2002, 1). According to Girardin, the proletarians pose not only a major
threat to society but – even more disconcertingly – to civilisation as a whole. In
particular, he envisages a horror scenario of a barbarian invasion from within, with
the workers as the European barbarians. Reacting to the Lyon weavers’ revolt in
December 1831, that saw the lower classes taking control of France’s second city
for several days, Girardin starkly warns of an impending civil war. He seems con-
vinced that its first stirrings have already surfaced in the “révolution prolétaire,” as
he significantly terms the Lyon revolt (1831, 1).43 This revolution is characterised
by a fierce class war between the class that owns property and the one that does
not. The perpetual advance and growth of industry creates a dilemma, since it
has led not only to a significant rise in bourgeois wealth but also to a dispropor-
tionate increase in the number of proletarians that form the nemesis of bourgeois
society. Emphasising the disconcerting demographic disproportion between capi-
talists and workers, Girardin then goes on to compare the proletarian revolution
with the extremely violent slave revolution and subsequent wars of liberation that
took place in the former French colony Saint-Domingue (1791-1804) (today’s
Haiti) on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola. Before the outbreak of revolution
in 1791 around 30,000 whites (among them the slave-holding planters) had faced
more than 400,000 black slaves in what was then the most profitable of all Car-
ribean colonies.44 Only a constant climate of surveillance and harsh oppression

42 Unsurprisingly, the image of the proletarian as the noble savage occurs much more frequently
in the socialist discourse. For example, Georg Weerth in his poem “Sie saßen auf den Bänken”
(1846) (discussed in chapter 4.1.5) characterises the Northern English workers as “Wilde,
zorn’ge Kerle” (1956 I, 204) with untamed socio-revolutionary energies.
43 Although he does not comment on the image of the proletarian barbarians, Helmut Bock rec-
ognises the crucial ideological relevance of Girardin’s article as a rallying cry against the socio-
revolutionary proletariat: “Das war die Interpretation des Klassenkampfes vom Standpunkt der
Erhaltung des kapitalistischen Eigentums und des bürgerlichen Staats. Die herrschende Finanz-
bourgeoisie trommelte die ‘Mittelklasse,’ die bürgerliche Intelligenz, zumal die Industrie- und
Handelsbourgeoisie, zur Sammlung gegen das frühe Proletariat.” (2001, 974)
44 On the eve of the French Revolution, there toiled (according to an official census figure from
1789) 465,429 slaves, compared to about 28,000 free coloured people and 30,000 whites
 191

guaranteed the survival of the socioeconomic system, which, at least on the sugar
plantations and factories, was decisively proto-industrial. The proto-industrial
production of sugar allows the Marxist C.L.R. James in his classic history of the
Haitian Revolution to cast the 1791 slave uprising that started the revolution as a
proto-proletarian revolt: Aiming “for the extermination of their oppressors,” the
slaves “living and working together in the huge sugar factories […] were closer
to a modern proletariat than any group of workers in existence at that time, and
the rising was, therefore, a thoroughly prepared and organized mass movement”
(2001, 69). As Girardin maintains, the threat that the proletarian workforce poses
to today’s industrialists is comparable to the one the slaves had posed to their mas-
ters. Both their ratio being a hundred to one, industrialists as well as slaveholders
are surrounded by hordes of barbaric workers who are just waiting for the most
auspicious moment to cut their masters’ throats. Aligning the rebellious proletar-
ian masses with the masses of revolted slaves, he taps into deep-seated spectres of
barbarism. Evoked by the only successful slave revolution in history within a large
part of its European observers, Girardin now again conjures them up in the face of
the revolt of the Lyon silk weavers:

La sédition de Lyon a révélé une grave secret, celui de la lutte intestine qui
a lieu dans la société entre la classe qui possède et celle qui ne possède pas.
Notre société commerciale et industrielle a sa plaie comme toutes les autres
sociétés; cette plaie, ce sont ses ouvriers. […] Otez le commerce, notre socié-
té languit, s’arrête, meurt: avivez, développez, multipliez le commerce, vous
multipliez en même temps une population prolétaire […] cherchez dans
chaque ville manufacturière, quel est le nombre relatif de la classe indus-
trielle et marchande et de la classe manœuvrière, vous serez effrayé de la dis-
proportion. Chaque fabricant vit dans sa fabrique comme les planteurs des
colonies au milieu de leurs esclaves, un contre cent; et la sédition de Lyon est
une espèce d’insurrection de Saint-Domingue. (Girardin 1831, 1)45

(See Dale & Fick 1998, 135). Robin Blackburn describes the socioeconomic order in Saint-
Domingue as “the most concentrated and extreme slave system that had ever existed” (2006,
647-648).
45 “The revolt of Lyon has revealed a grave secret; that of the internal war in society between the
haves and the have-nots. Our commercial and industrial society has its blight just like any the
other societies; this blight is its workers. […] Take away trade, our society languishes, stops
working, dies. Liven up, develop, multiply trade, you multiply at the same time the proletarian
population […] Look in each factory town, what is the relative number of the industrial and
business class in relation to the working class, you will be alarmed by the disproportion. Every
manufacturer lives in his factory like the colonial planter amidst their slaves, one against a hun-
dred, and the revolt of Lyon is a kind of insurrection like in Saint-Domingue” (my translation).
192

Constructing a parallel between the workers’ revolt in Lyon and the slave revolt
in Saint-Domingue, Girardin further suggests that the bourgeoisie might lose the
class war against the proletarians, just as the planters have lost the fight against
their rebellious slaves. He highlights the acute danger that the proletarians, the
blight (“plaie”) of industrial capitalist society, allegedly pose to society and civilisa-
tion through mentioning a second traumatic event to which he likens the prole-
tarian revolution: the barbarian invasions that destroyed the Roman Empire and
threatened Europe during the Middle Ages. Yet, according to Girardin, neither the
revolted slaves in Caribbean that defied Europe’s superpowers, France and Britain,
nor Attila the Hun formed such a grave threat to civilisation as the modern work-
ers who eke out their existence on the margins of the European industrial cities:
“Les Barbares qui menacent la société ne sont point au Caucase ni dans les steppes
de la Tartarie; ils sont dans les faubourgs de nos villes manufacturières […]” (Saint
Marc-Girardin 1831, 1).46 Explicitly, Girardin categorises the proletarians as the
barbarians within European society.47 The clash of civilisation is thus no longer
structured in purely spatial and racial terms as it had traditionally been construct-
ed, between those nomadic tribes out there in the steppes of Asia and the civilised
and cultured inhabitants of Western Europe. As Claude Lefort points out – this
notion of a “barbarie interne” that threatens Europe’s civilisation had already been
entertained by counterrevolutionary writers at the time of the French Revolution
(cf. 2005, 40-41).48 However, the identification of the rebellious proletarians as the
modern barbarians is new. As Girardin insists, the dividing line between barbarism
46 “The Barbarians who menace society are neither in the Caucasus nor in the steppes of Tartary;
they are at the edge of our industrial cities” (my translation).
47 The socialist poet and author Georg Weerth harks back to this spectre of a barbaric invasion
from within in the speech that he gave at the “Free Trade Congress” in Brussels (16-17 Septem-
ber 1847). For the first time, he expounds in his speech key tenets of Marxism to a larger bour-
geois audience. Echoing Girardin, as much as Blanqui’s formula of the war of the poor against
the rich, he warns the assembled capitalists of the impending proletarian social revolution. Like
Blanqui, he implies that this impending civil war is a direct result of capitalist exploitation. Ef-
fectively he thus turns he allegations of barbarism against the capitalists comparing them to slave
holders who oppress their white slaves, the proletarians: “Denn nicht mehr feindliche Einfälle
der Kosaken haben Sie zu fürchten, aber den Krieg Ihrer Arbeiter gegen Sie, den Krieg der Ar-
men gegen die Reichen, den Krieg der weißen Sklaven gegen ihre Unterdrücker. Die Arbeiter
sind satt der Versprechungen ohne Erfüllung; sie wollen nichts mehr wissen von den nimmer
bezahlten Anweisungen auf den Himmel” (Weerth 1956 II, 133).
48 Besides Edmund Burke’s tirade against the French Revolutionaries as the new barbarians, Lefort
singles out the counterrevolutionary author Mallet du Pan. Like Girardin he recalls the his-
toric barbaric invasion from without to establish his thesis of the new barbarism within Europe:
“Cette fois-ci les Huns, […] les Vandales et les Goths ne viendront pas du Nord ni de la Mer
noire, ils sont au milieu de nous.” (Quoted in Lefort 2005, 40) “This time around the Huns,
 193

and civilisation runs right through the heart of Europe and the decisive criterion
that separates civilisation from barbarism is not race but class.
As pointed out, in the pamphlet “Gedanken eines Republikaner” (1837) Theo-
dor Schuster, a writer of the early German proletarian movement, construed a par-
allel between the Haitian Slave Revolution and the Lyon Weavers’ Revolt, between
the revolted black and white ‘slaves.’ Also substituting race for class, he recognises
in both revolts signs of an impending proletarian social revolution:

[…] die Sklavenherrschaft besteht, heute wie vor zweitausend Jahren, in Eu-
ropa wie auf den westindischen Inseln, und die einzige Verschiedenheit hier
und dort besteht darin, daß man die Sklaven bei den barbarischen Pflanzern
mit der Peitsche zur Arbeit treibt, im civilisirten Europa aber mit dem Kapi-
tal. Auf Haiti unterstützten die müßigen Pflanzer ihren Besitz mit den Be-
weisgründen der Geißel, in Europa unterstützen die müßigen Kapitalisten
ihren Besitz mit den Beweisgründen des Hungers und des Kapitals: in Haiti
antworteten die Sklaven mit dem Brandzeichen der socialen Revolution: die
Warnungsworte der Geächteten Europa’s stehen auf den Mauern von Bristol
und Lyon! (Schuster 1977, 192; emphasis in original)

In sharp contrast to Girardin, Schuster, when he draws up a parallel between the

social revolution in the Caribbean and the social revolution in Europe, portrays
the masters and capitalists as the culprits for the outbreak of class violence. The
ones practice slavery, the others wage-slavery. The use of force, both by the slaves
in Haiti and the workers in Europe, is a reaction of the labouring poor to the reck-
less exploitation by their idle masters: “die müßigen Pflanzer” and “die müßigen
Kapitalisten” respectively.
As the social tensions heighten, this comparison between the slave revolution
in Haiti and the social revolution in Europe no longer remains limited to the early
German proletarian discourse but also surfaces in the German liberal discourse.
Nine years after Schuster and fifteen years after Girardin, in 1846, the German
liberal author and politician Wilhelm Jordan warns, even more powerfully, of the
threat to society and civilisation that a proletarian social revolution would pre-
sent to Europe. Recalling the Haitian Revolution, he claims that while the Afro-
Caribbean black slaves in Saint-Domingue destroyed the socioeconomic order and
made the country relapse into a state of barbarity, the European white slaves pose
an even greater menace to civilisation. In addition he asserts that Europe’s wealth,
civilisation, and culture are built upon rotten foundations. Jordan maintains in the
[…] the Vandals and the Goths neither come from the North nor from the Black Sea, they are
amidst us” (my translation).
194

same way as Girardin that not only is “die Zahl der weißen Sklaven” incomparably
greater than the number of black slaves had ever been, but, as a “kulturwüchsige”
form of slavery, also their number invariably increases with the ongoing industrial
advancements (cf. 1846, 5). If the ongoing class war cannot be stopped through
decisive social reforms, then the inevitable proletarian revolution will cause Europe
to descend into the same barbaric state as Haiti did after the slave revolution. The
horrific scenario of self-liberation, that had become reality in the Haitian Slave
Revolution, could materialise itself again in a European proletarian revolution:

Wohlan, man werfe einen Blick nach Hayti! In seiner jüngsten Vergangen-
heit haben wir einen Miniaturspiegel der Zukunft Europa, die nothwendig
eintreten muß und wird wenn der Angstschrei der erdrückten und abge-
zehrten Träger der ganzen Gesellschaft kein Gehör findet und die Sklaven
gezwungen werden zur Selbstbefreiung. Auch Hayti hatte im Jahre 1789 eine
staunenswürdige Kulturüppigkeit erreicht, aber nur durch einen entsetz-
lichen Menschenverbrauch. Die Fesseln wurden gewaltsam gesprengt; in
dem grausenhaften Befreiungskrieg der Befreiten gegen die Unterdrücker
ging die ganze emporgeschwindelte Herrlichkeit in Trümmer, die Kultur
ward fast zur Barbarei, und erst nachdem ihr Paradies zur Wüstenei gewor-
den, erbten es die armen Sieger. Furchtbare Lehre der Geschichte! (Jordan
1846, 5-6, Jordan’s emphasis)

Although less explicitly than Jordan or even Girardin, Heine also employs this
powerful discourse of the similarities between the social revolution that the slave
revolution had been and the one that proletarian revolution could become. Writ-
ing about The Merchant of Venice in Shakespeares Mädchen und Frauen (1838)
Heine also links the revengeful slaves in Haiti to the European masses. Discuss-
ing the roots of anti-Semitism, he finds it in the stark socioeconomic divisions,
between a wealthy minority and masses of people living in abject poverty. In their
delusion (“Wahn”), the people single out a certain social group among their class
enemies as scapegoats, be it Jews involved the financial business or West Indian
planters. The oppressed ruthlessly massacre that social group rather than to address
the underlying social injustices. In spite of the sympathy that Heine ostentatiously
displays towards their socioeconomic situation, both the European masses and
slaves in Saint-Domingue are depicted as resembling savage barbarians rather than
civilised beings. Driven by hate and revenge, the lower-class people act as if they
were influenced entirely by unchecked emotions and not guided by any rational
motives. Their savage nature makes them at once powerful and highly destructive:
 195
[…] es haßt die Reichen und ist froh wenn ihm die Religion erlaubt, sich
diesem Hasse mit vollem Gemüte hinzugeben. Das gemeine Volk haßte in
den Juden immer nur die Geldbesitzer, es war immer das aufgehäufte Me-
tall, welches die Blitze seines Zornes auf die Juden herabzog. Der jedeswei-
lige Zeitgeist lieh nun immer jenem Hasse seine Parole. Im Mittelalter trug
diese Parole die düstre Farbe der katholischen Kirche, und man schlug die
Juden tot und plünderte ihre Häuser: “weil sie Christus gekreuzigt” – ganz
mit derselben Logik, wie auf St. Domingo einige schwarze Christen, zur
Zeit der Massacre, mit einem Bilde des gekreuzigten Heilands herumliefen
und fanatisch schrieen: les blancs l’ont tué, tuons tous les blancs.49 Mein
Freund, Sie lachen über die armen Neger; ich versichere Sie, die westin-
dischen Pflanzer lachten damals nicht, und wurden niedergemetzelt, zur
Sühne Christi, wie einige Jahrhunderte früher die europäischen Juden.
Aber die schwarzen Christen auf St. Domingo hatten in der Sache ebenfalls
Recht! die Weißen lebten müßig in der Fülle aller Genüsse, während der
Neger im Schweiße seines schwarzen Angesichts für sie arbeiten mußte, und
zum Lohne nur ein bißchen Reismehl und sehr viele Peitschenhiebe erhielt;
die Schwarzen waren das gemeine Volk. – (Heine 1997 IV, 259-260)

Heine’s play here with the spectre of barbarism is ambivalent. While Heine con-
demns the means with which the deluded masses – be they the medieval mob
during pogroms of Jews or the Caribbean slaves during the massacres of the plant-
ers – aim to fight social injustice and the false logic that drives them, he neverthe-
less seems sympathetic with their plight.
Such understanding of the oppressed people in the Middle Ages or the slaves
in the Caribbean largely vanishes when it comes to depicting the atrocities of the
modern-day European barbarians, the proletarians. Their alleged savagery is fore-
grounded most strongly in Article VI of Französische Zustände. Raising the spectre
of anarchy and class war, Heine presents a lower-class lynch mob that barbarically
butchers and mutilates its victims. The Parisian poor – under the delusion that the
cholera epidemic of 1832 constitutes a conspiracy of the rich to poison them –
take this occasion to randomly slaughter any bourgeois suspects:

49 “[T]he whites killed him, let’s kill all the whites” (my translation). A possible source for this
anecdote might be Victor Hugo’s novel Bug-Jargal (1826) about the Haitian Revolution. In
chapter 28 he depicts a mock Catholic Mass that a leader of the rebel slaves, Jean Bissou, con-
ducts. With almost the same phrase spoken in Creole, he exhorts his follower to continue their
vengeance on the whites: “Blan touyé li, touyé blan yo toute.” According the French translation
that Hugo provides in a footnote, it means: “Les blancs l’ont tué; tuez tous les blancs” (Hugo
1910 XX, 446). “The whites killed him, kill all the whites” (my translation).
196
Wie wilde Tiere, wie Rasende, fiel dann das Volk über sie her. Sehr viele ret-
ten sich durch Geistesgegenwart; viele wurden von den Kommunalgarden,
die an jenem Tage überall herumpatrouillierten, der Gefahr entrissen; an-
dere wurden schwer verwundet und verstümmelt; andere sechs Menschen
wurden aufs unbarmherzigste ermordet. Es gibt keinen gräßlichern Anblick,
als solchen Volkszorn, wenn er nach Blut lechzt und seine wehrlosen Opfer
hinwürgt. Dann wälzt sich durch die Straßen ein dunkles Menschenmeer,
worin hie und da die Ouvriers in Hemdsärmeln, wie weiße Sturzwellen, her-
vorschäumen, und das heult und braust, gnadenlos, heidnisch, dämonisch.
Auf der Straße St-Denis hörte ich den altberühmten Ruf “A la laterne!”, und
mit Wut erzählten mir einige Stimmen, man hänge einen Giftmischer. Die
einen sagten, er sei ein Karlist, man habe ein brevêt de lis in seiner Tasche
gefunden; die andern sagten, es sei ein Priester, ein solcher sei alles fähig.
Auf der Straße Vaugirard, wo man zwei Menschen, die ein weißes Pulver
bei sich gehabt, ermordete, sah ich einen dieser Unglücklichen, als er noch
etwas röchelte, und eben die alten Weiber ihre Holzschuhe von den Füßen
zogen und ihn damit so lange auf den Kopf schlugen, bis er tot war.50 Er
war ganz nackt, und blutrünstig zerschlagen und zerquetscht; nicht bloß die
Kleider, sondern auch die Haare, die Scham, die Lippen und die Nase waren
ihm abgerissen, und ein wüster Mensch band dem Leichname einen Strick
um die Füße, und schleifte ihn damit durch die Straße, während er be-
ständig schrie: “Voilà le Choléra-morbus!” Ein wunderschönes, wutblasses
Weibsbild mit entblößten Brüsten und blutbedeckten Händen stand dabei,
und gab dem Leichname, als er ihr nahe kam, noch einen Tritt mit dem
Fuße. Sie lachte, und bat mich ihrem zärtlichen Handwerke einige Franks
zu zollen, damit sie sich dafür ein schwarzes Trauerkleid kaufe; denn ihre
Mutter sei vor einigen Stunden gestorben, an Gift. (Heine 1997 III, 173)

Much more defamatory than Girardin, who despite his stark warnings of a pro-
letarian revolution professes great understanding for their dire plight, Heine
here strongly demonises them.51 Motivated by an untamed, raging lust for blood

50 It is possible that Heine here also recalls the so-called ‘September Massacres’ in 1792, when
a mob – incited by the Jacobins – murdered many hundreds whom they considered counter-
revolutionaries. In his dispatch of 14 September 1792 the English ambassador to Paris, Earl
Gower, claims that this very street, rue de Vaugirard, had been the scene of a massacre by savage
sans-culottes: “a large body of sans-culottes […] proceeded to the Church de Carmes, rue de
Vaugirard, where amidst acclamations of a savage mob they massacred a number of refractory
Priests, all the Vicaires de Saint Sulpice, the directors of the Seminaries, and the Doctors of
Sorbonne, with the ci-devant Archbishop of Arles, and a number of others, exceeding in all one
hundred and seventy” (Gower 1885, 226).
51 Girardin verbosely pleads with his readers for sympathy with the new barbarians, the proletar-
ians: “ces Barbares, il ne faut point les injurier; ils sont, hélas! plus à plaindre qu’ à blâmer: ils
 197

(“Volkszorn, [der …] nach Blut lechzt”), the proletarians are portrayed as semi-
human: a cross between wild animals and savages who mercilessly butcher their
victims, if their excesses are not stopped by the communal guards, a bourgeois and
petty-bourgeois militia. Within the extended metaphor that casts the sea of people
as an all-devouring flood wave, there are certain terms that associate the proletariat
with non-European, barbaric people. While the adjective “dunkles” already might
refer to the darker skin colour of the proletarians/savages and carry a connota-
tion of moral darkness, the following triplet of adjectives “gnadenlos, heidnisch,
dämonisch” evidently links them to popular images of the demonic savagery al-
legedly practiced by ‘primitive’ tribes. The stark image of the “wüster Mensch”
who drags along the body of his victim, whose hair, genitals, lips have been ripped
off, evokes powerful associations with barbarism, in particular with demonic and
maybe even cannibalistic rituals. The atavistic ritual of humiliation that he per-
forms on his slain foe further magnifies such fears. When he parades the body as
the cholera sickness personified (shouting “Voilà le Choléra-morbus!”), he could
be said even to adhere to pre-scientific beliefs in witchcraft. He seems to consider
his murdered adversary as a sort of sorcerer who kills by inducing sickness in his
enemies. Semantically, these associations with savagery are further strengthened by
the attribute “wüst” which in this context means ‘wild.’ Both etymologically and
semantically related to the word desert (‘Wüste’), the term carries further negative
connotations and associations. If these savages will rise up in greater numbers and
practise their killings on a greater scale, then France, or even Europe, might be
turned from a civilised country into a cultural and social desert, the “Wüstenei”
Jordan later envisages.
This passage proves that Heine’s stance towards the proletariat is not always
characterised by a benevolent and sympathetic paternal attitude, as Zhang Yushu
has recently claimed, but, on the contrary, at times by fierce hostility.52 The prole-
tarians act like wild animals (or for that matter ‘savages’) in their random slaughter
of the rich and lack even the most basic human emotions such as mercy. Moreover,
one can also find the stereotypical image of repulsion and sexual attraction, the
erotic lure of the exotic barbarian female who is at the same time murderously cru-
el and greatly sexually attractive. In this passage these qualities are epitomised by

souffrent; la misère les écrase. Comment ne chercheraient-ils pas aussi une meilleure condition?”
(Girardin 1831, 1) “these Barbarians, one must not insult them, they are, alas! more to pity than
to blame: they suffer, misery crushes them. Why should they not also seek a better condition?”
(my translation).
52 Yushu writes that Heine was a “Freund des Proletariats,” who appreciated “diese verzweifelten
Kinder so voller Liebe und Mitleid, doch zugleich so nüchtern und objektiv” (2004, 152).
198

the sexualised half-naked woman with “entblößten Brüsten” and bloodied hands.
Overcome with ecstatic passion, she kicks the dead body of the mutilated man
whose genitals have been ripped off. Instead of diminishing her sexual allure, her
savage fury makes her appear even more attractive as it is expressed in the triple al-
literation, “wunderschönes, wutblasses Weibsbild.” Emotional to the extreme, she
is cast as an epitome of sexual prowess and unbridled sexuality as she humiliates
the castrated body of the young man that is being dragged past her. In spite of the
great sexual attraction she exercises (not at least on the bourgeois observer), the
proletarian woman also constitutes a figure of profound menace. She epitomises
all the alleged characteristics of the proletariat of which the bourgeoisie was almost
hysterically afraid: power, fierceness, wildness, inhumanity, brutality, irrational-
ity, etc. One could even argue that the proletarian woman in this passage func-
tions as an allegory of proletarian revolution. As a counter-figure to the allegory of
bourgeois revolution, her appearance recalls the allegorical figure of “Liberté” in
Delacroix’s iconic painting of the bourgeois July Revolution of 1830, “La Liberté
guidant le peuple” (1830) (Image III). Delacroix’s Liberty, who also displays her
naked breasts to the onlooker, leads the people on in their ascent towards politi-
cal freedom. Heine’s ‘Anarchy,’ however, spurs on her fellow proletarians in their
descent towards savagery, kicking the mutilated body that is being dragged on
the ground. While Delacroix’s “Liberté,” who is carrying the tricolour flag in her
hands, stands for the glory of the bourgeois political revolution,53 Heine’s proletar-
ian woman figure “mit blutbedeckten Händen” becomes an allegory of the horrors
of a proletarian social revolution. Heine provocatively suggests that it is not the
cholera epidemic that poses the real danger to society, but the proletarian plague.54
As the stark image of the young man’s barbarically mutilated body suggests, pro-
letarian violence may even rip apart the entire body politic. Solely if the masses
are being led by a grand bourgeois idea, such as political freedom, then “die wilde
Volkskraft” may be tamed and the savage rabble ennobled, as Heine insists in his
ekphrasis of Delacroix’s painting in Französische Maler (1833): “ein großer Gedanke
hat diese gemeinen Leute, diese Crapüle [rabble], geadelt und geheiligt und die

53 The historian Helmut Bock goes as far as to identify in Delacroix’s painting the ideological delu-
sions of the concept of a bourgeois political revolution. With all the classes uniting under the
banner of a bourgeois idea of freedom, for Bock Delacroix’s vision constitutes the “[t]reuherzig
gemalte Illusion der bürgerlich-demokratischen Revolutionen dieser Epoche: ‘Die Freiheit führt
das Volk’” (2008, 5).
54 Similarly, Saint Marc-Girardin, in another article that carries almost the same date as Heine’s
(18 April 1832), insists that the proletariat forms a social blight (“une plaie sociale”) that is far
more dangerous than the raging cholera epidemic. (1832, 1) For an ideologically diametrically
opposed interpretation of the painting, see Bellos 1998.
 199

entschlafene Würde in ihrer Seele wieder aufgeweckt” (Heine 1997 III, 40). Only
if these brute socio-revolutionary proletarians have undergone a successful mission
civilicatrice and become brave foot soldiers in the bourgeois revolutionary strug-
gle, they merit a positive representation as semi-refined, yet still exotic ‘Hellenic’
artefacts. Heine’s “Gassenvenus” and “Schornsteinkupido” (40) are as suitable for
bourgeois, voyeuristic, aesthetic consumption as are the proletarian figures on De-
lacroix’s canvas they refer to.

Image III Eugène Delacroix “La Liberté guidant le peuple” (1830) Musée du Louvre
(Image from Wikimedia Commons)

Heine is not the only contemporary German author to link the cholera epidemic
to class war and proletarian revolution. The strong anti-proletarian tendencies in
Heine’s depiction of the behaviour and actions of the Parisian proletariat during
the Europe-wide cholera epidemic of 1830-31 (which in the French capital alone
killed more than 18,000 people, mainly from the lower classes), become even more
strikingly evident when one contrasts Heine’s portrayal of the people’s reaction to
the cholera epidemic to Ludwig Börne’s in the “Sechzigster Brief ” (1833) out of
200

the Briefe aus Paris. Börne’s depiction seems to constitute a direct attack on the al-
legations against the lower classes that are raised in Heine’s Französische Zustände.
Compared with Heine, Börne shows much more sympathy for the proletariat and
its reaction to this crisis. Echoing the common claim (that Heine also employs)
that the lower classes behave like raging animals, like a savage beast (“wildes Tier),
Börne turns such accusations of barbarism against the bourgeoisie. He angrily in-
dicts the cynically arrogant and self-congratulatory observation of the bourgeoisie
that the cholera only affects the poor and thus the rich had nothing to fear. Börne
weighs such contempt that the bourgeois press displays towards the proletariat
against proletariat’s seemingly delirious notion that there exists a conspiracy of the
rich to poison the poor. In sharp contrast to Heine, Börne maintains that there lies
a profound truth behind the proletariat’s conspiracy theory. As Börne asserts, the
rich are indeed conspiring to wage a ruthless war upon the poor:

Und nach allen diesen Abscheulichkeiten kommen sie und lästern über die
Unglücklichen, die nichts zu verlieren haben, und fordern die reichen Leute
auf, gegen das wilde Tier, Volk, auf seiner Hut zu sein! Geschieht das alles
sogar in Frankreich, wo die freie Presse manche Gewalttätigkeit verhindert,
manche wieder gutmacht – was mag nicht erst in jenen Ländern geschehen
wo alles stumm, ist, wo keiner klagen darf, und wo jeder nur den Schmerz
erfährt, den er selber fühlt! Wie man dort das arme Volk betrachtet, wie man
es dort behandelt, wie man es dort verachtet, das hat ja die Cholera, diese
unerhörte Preßfrechheit des Himmels, uns sehr nahe vor die Augen gestellt.
Wie haben sie in Rußland, Österreich und Preußen gelächelt, gespottet und
geschulmeistert – und ihr Lächeln war ein blinkendes Schwert, ihre Beleh-
rung kam aus dem Munde einer Kanone, und ihr Spott war der Tod – über
die wahnsinnige Verblendung des Volks, welches glaubte, die Vornehmen
und Reichen wollten sie vergiften, und die Cholera sei ein Mischmasch
des Hasses! Aber die Wahrheit, die mitten in diesem Wahne verborgen, der
dunkle Trieb, der das Volk lehrt, es sei nur ein schlechtes Handwerkszeug,
zum Dienste der Reichen geschaffen, das man wegwirft, wenn man es nicht
braucht, und zerbricht, sobald es unbrauchbar geworden – diese Wahr-
heit ist den Spöttern und Schulmeistern entgangen. (Börne 1964 III, 378;
Börne’s emphasis)

Playing with the question of which social faction is more deluded here, the poor
or the rich, Börne in facts turns the allegations of barbarism against the rich. In
his view the proletariat’s misguided notion that the bourgeoisie wants to kill it
by poisoning it constitutes a semiconscious realisation of the proletariat’s socio-
economic status under capitalism. As Börne alleges, the proletarians functions as
 201

tools to be discarded and destroyed once their labour can no longer be profitably
exploited. While its social insights still remain on a rudimentary, unconscious level
of the instinct (“dunkle Trieb”), awareness grows with the lessons learned from the
bourgeoisie’s blunt ideological attacks against their class enemies. Although Heine,
in the passage from Shakespeares Mädchen und Frauen about the Saint-Domingue
Slave Revolution, also concedes to the slaves and lower classes an unconscious
rightful motivation – “ein ganz richtiger Instinkt” (cf. Heine 1997 IV, 259) that
they are being harshly exploited – he condemns their barbaric actions. Moreover,
Heine does not believe that with the lower classes gaining a less deluded con-
sciousness, their atrocities will cease. According to Börne, however, the proletariat
seems on to be on its way to acquiring a fully human social consciousness. As “ein
schlechtes Handwerkszeug, zum Dienste der Reichen geschaffen, das man weg-
wirft, wenn man es nicht braucht, und zerbricht, wenn es unbrauchbar geworden,”
these misgivings against the capitalists correspond with a harsh socioeconomic re-
ality. As Börne suggests, the poor are so strongly exploited that have been reduced
to the status of mere tools. While Heine employs the deluded ideas of the prole-
tarians to portray them as irrational, animal-like savages, Börne employs them to
mount a scathing critique of the bourgeoisie, its cynicism, and its exploitation of
the poor. Moreover, as Börne implies, the cholera and (in particular the bourgeoi-
sie’s reaction to it) have revealed that the rich are waging a deadly war against the
poor. This war takes place in words and gestures as much as with actual weapons.
The close link of material and rhetorical social warfare is illustrated by the triplet
of metaphors “Lächeln – blinkendes Schwert,” “Belehrung – Mund der Kanone,”
“Spott – Tod.” To put it bluntly, what Börne suggests is that, under the cloak of
civility and civilised behaviour, the rich are the real barbarians and not the poor
whom the rich tend to liken to fierce wild beasts.
Heine does not decisively alter his generally negative perception of the pro-
letariat. On the contrary, in the 1840s again evokes the spectre of proletarian
revolution when he discusses in article LI of Lutezia (17 September 1842) the
English mass movement of Chartism. This he considers even more dangerous to
bourgeois society than early French socialism and the French workers’ revolts. The
“Terrorismus” of the Chartists, which allegedly aims to incite the proletariat to
socio-revolutionary action, will cause “eine soziale Umwälzung,” which will at-
tack the established “Eigentumsidee, des Grundpfeilers der heutigen Gesellschaft.”
Compared to the horrors of this future proletarian social revolution, the terror of
the bourgeois French Revolution will pale; it will “als sehr zahm und bescheiden
erscheinen” (cf. Heine 1997 V, 419-420). The allegations of barbarism against the
proletariat are even intensified when Heine insinuates that the French workers
202

indulge in cannibalism as a means to fight against the bourgeoisie. Demonising

the proletariat even further, he suggests that in the imminent proletarian revolu-
tion this uneducated class will reveal its true nature as bloodthirsty cannibalistic
savages. This will inevitably happen unless bourgeois social utopian ideas, such as
Saint-Simonism,55 will manage to cure the social disease that afflicts the body poli-
tic. More likely, however, than such an outcome is the scenario of a horrendous up-
rising of the English workers. As Heine alleges, the revolted English proletarians,
like their French counterparts (the workers of Lyon in 1831 and in 1834), will also
acquire a taste for human flesh. Appealing to the worst bourgeois nightmares about
butchering hordes of proletarians who resemble savage cannibals, he writes:56

[…] nur […] durch geistige Medikamente kann der sieche Staatskörper ge-
heilt werden. Nur soziale Ideen können hier eine Rettung aus der verhäng-
nisvollsten Not herbeiführen, aber, um mit Saint-Simon zu reden, auf allen
Werften Englands gibt es keine einzige soziale Idee; nichts als Dampfma-
schinen und Hunger. Jetzt ist freilich der Aufruhr unterdrückt, aber durch
öftere Ausbrüche kann es wohl dahin kommen, daß die englischen Fabrik-
arbeiter, die nur Baum- und Schafwolle zu verarbeiten wissen, sich auch ein
bißchen in Menschenfleisch versuchen und sich die die nötigen Handgriffe
aneignen, und endlich dieses blutige Gewerbe ebenso mutvoll ausüben wie
ihre Kollegen die Ouvriers zu Lyon und Paris […]. (Heine 1997 V, 419)

There is no evidence that Heine’s negative and angst-ridden perspective on a socio-

revolutionary proletariat underwent any significant change from the mid-1840s
onwards. His acquaintance with Marx in Paris in 1843 did not convince Heine
of Marx’s tenet of proletarian social revolution as the panacea to society’s ills, as
has been occasionally argued. While there is evidence (as pointed out earlier) that
Heine was able to identify with Marx’s insistence on the vital role of philosophy
for engendering socio-political change – the perceived “Führungsrolle, welche die
Philosophen darin übernahmen” (Schieder 1981, 124-125) – he was not prepared
to endorse a scenario of a violent proletarian revolution. Heine never subscribed
concept of proletarian self-emancipation that aimed to destroy bourgeois capitalist
society as the way to end social oppression, as for instance Marx started to develop
in his “Kritische Randglossen” in August 1844.

55 It is surprising that Heine in this context does not seem to count the contemporary cooperative
movement of Owen and his followers as an important social idea, but instead refers back to
Saint-Simonism, which in the early 1840s had already become an anachronism.
56 Read against this passage, Stathis Kouvelakis’ claim that “Heine saw an English revolution brew-
ing […b]ut was not in the least alarmed by it,” (2003, 44) seems untenable.
 203

3.2.4 Heine’s Ludwig Börne: Eine Denkschrift (1840): A Polemic against Prole-
tarian Social Revolution

As illustrated in the previous subsection, Heine’s negative attitude towards the

proletariat had strong repercussions on his stance towards proletarian social rev-
olution. How Heine’s pronounced distancing from the rebellious masses clouds
his understanding of political and social revolution becomes most evident in his
definition of these terms in article IX of Französische Zustände (1832). Interpret-
ing the terms ‘soziale’ and ‘politische Revolution’ in a semantically and ideologi-
cally different way from both the early French socialists and Marx, Heine crucially
warns against letting the proletariat and its demands determine the shape of the
social revolution. Effectively dismissing political revolution, by which he seems
to understand a mass revolution, he defines “social revolution” as socio-political
change in the distant future that is envisaged by bourgeois intellectuals. As he as-
serts, social revolution is not determined by the demands of the masses, whereas
political revolution is:

Der Schriftsteller, welcher eine soziale Revolution befördern will, darf im-
merhin seiner Zeit um ein Jahrhundert vorauseilen; der Tribun hingegen,
welcher eine politische Revolution beabsichtigt, darf sich nicht allzuweit
von den Massen entfernen. Überhaupt, in der Politik, wie im Leben, darf
man nur das Erreichbare wünschen. (Heine 1997 III, 215)

Promoting such an elitist, utopian “social revolution” remains the exclusive domain
of the visionary bourgeois intellectuals. For Heine it is a bourgeois author like
himself who must become the prophet of such future socio-revolutionary change
from above, one that paradoxically prevents the masses from taking the active role
in their own liberation. By reducing the impact of the masses, he transforms the
concept of proletarian social revolution into one of bourgeois social revolution.57
Heine also dismisses those writers who assign to the masses the decisive role
of shaping the social revolution as narrow-minded populists who adhere to an
anachronistic concept of political revolution. This key passage from Französische
Zustände (apart from defining Heine’s idiosyncratic understanding of social revo-
57 The attitude towards the masses forms the ideological crux of this passage that Fritz Mende –
paradigmatically for numerous critics – refuses to acknowledge when he argues that Heine’s
conception of social revolution bears a close link to the momentary state of consciousness of the
masses: “So bleibt thematisch die soziale Revolution im Zentrum seiner hochgestimmten poli-
tischen Erwartungen, die er freilich stets an den Gegebenheiten der Zeit und am gegenwärtigen
Bewußtseinsstand der ‘Massen’ auszurichten bemüht ist” (Mende 1991, 96).
204

lution) also constitutes a sharp attack on Börne and his revolutionary ideology
that was increasingly influenced by an early socialist and early proletarian notion
of revolution. In his controversial essay against Börne, Ludwig Börne: Eine Denk-
schrift (1840), Heine singles out this shift in Börne’s revolutionary ideology as a
main point of his polemic against his – by then dead – colleague and rival. In fact,
I would go so far as to argue that the controversy over proletarian social revolution
is the decisive ideological issue that is at stake in this bitter feud between these – at
this time – most famous German revolutionary writers, an aspect that has so far
been largely ignored by existing scholarship on the Heine-Börne feud.58 While
Heine wisely refrained from embarking on “die deutsche Tribunalkarriere” (1997
IV, 75) – a clear echo of the “Tribun” that associates with the masses from the
above passage in Französische Zustände – Börne had succumbed to this temptation.
As Heine suggests in a series of insidious rhetorical questions, Börne, in embrac-
ing the proletarians, had become as vulgar as they are. Börne had debased himself
and turned into a disgustingly pathetic figure, as Heine insinuates with the drastic
image of Börne joyously wallowing in the proletarian faeces in spite of his cultured
bourgeois upbringing:

War es Tugend oder Wahnsinn, was den Ludwig Börne dahin brachte, die
schlimmsten Mistdüfte mit Wonne einzuschnaufen und sich vergnüglich
im plebejischen Kot zu wälzen? Wer löst uns das Rätsel dieses Mannes, der
in weichlichster Seide erzogen worden, späterhin in stolzen Anflügen seine
innere Vornehmheit bekundete, und gegen Ende seiner Tage plötzlich über-
schnappte in pöbelhafte Töne und in die banalen Manieren eines Demago-
gen der untersten Stufe? (Heine 1997 IV, 75-76)

According to Heine, Börne has shamefully betrayed his class allegiances. Heine
explains Börne’s fall by implying that he was deluded by the poisonous ideology
of the proletarian social revolution that had been preached at the meetings of the
exiled German artisan associations. Their pernicious influence had driven him out
of his mind, Heine suggests. In turn, Börne had switched his allegiances from the

58 See for instance Oellers 1972, Kaufmann 1973, Rippmann 1972, 1981, 1995 & 1997, Hin-
derer 1974, Hohendahl 1980, Kruse 1988, Lamping 1990, Kolk 1998, Briegleb 2003, Tauber
2003, Höhn 2004, 421-424, Yushu 2004, 138-143 and Eke 2005, 68-69. For a study of the
contemporary and later reception of the controversy and its protagonists in literary history, see
Weber 1984. For an anthology of its reception and of Heine’s and Börne’s respective attacks on
each other, see Enzensberger 1997. The scope of this study does not permit me to discuss the
particulars of the debate between Börne and Heine, let alone review the substantial amount of
criticism dealing with it. For a comprehensive summary of scholarship before 1980, see Lam-
ping 1990, 200-201.
 205

bourgeoisie to the proletariat abandoning his “innere Vornehmheit” for “pöbel-

hafte Töne.” A great concern of Heine’s was that working-class circles had replaced
political equality with social equality as the goal of revolution, thus endangering
the hegemony of the bourgeoisie. Heine implies this through the following spiteful
description of the constituent meeting of the Paris branch of the ‘Deutsche Preß-
verein’ in 1832, which united German intellectuals and craftsmen:

Börne sprach über den Preßverein, welcher sich vor aristokratischer Form
zu bewahren habe; [...] ein verwachsener, krummbeinigter Schneidergeselle
trat auf und behauptete alle Menschen seien gleich ... Ich ärgerte mich nicht
wenig über diese Impertinenz .... Es war das erste und letzte Mal, daß ich
der Volksversammlung beiwohnte. (Heine 1997 IV, 74-75)

Börne, as Heine insinuates, had betrayed his bourgeois roots by siding with the
proletarian enemy. The latter is here epitomised by the deformed apprentice tailor
whom Heine caricatures. While capitalist exploitative violence is tacitly acknowl-
edged – the apprentice seems to have become a cripple through his exploitative
work – the goal of social equality is angrily dismissed.59 Börne, so Heine alleges,
misuses his great oratory skills to preach the ideology of violent social revolution
to the proletarian-plebeian groups, thus heightening the socio-revolutionary threat
that they already pose to bourgeois society:

[…] jene Pariser Propaganda bestand vielmehr aus rohen Händen als aus
feinen Köpfen; es waren Zusammenkünfte von Handwerkern deutscher
Zunge, die in einem großen Saale des Passage Saumon oder in den Fau-
bourgs sich versammelten [...] hier wurden nun, durch leidenschaftliche
Reden, […] viele Gemüter fanatisiert, und da der Republikanismus eine
so grade Sache ist, und leichter begreifbar, als die konstitutionelle Regie-
rungsform, wobei schon manchererlei Kenntnisse vorausgesetzt werden: so
dauerte es nicht lange und tausende von deutschen Handwerkern wurden
Republikaner […] vielleicht weit mächtiger als Börnes geschriebene Reden
war Börnes mündliches Wort, welches er an Leute richtete, die es mit deut-
schem Glauben einsogen und mit apostolischem Eifer in der Heimat ver-

59 Identifying Heine as a liberal in socio-political terms, Hans Boldt highlights the extent of
Heine’s antipathy to radical notions of social equality: “Die meritokratische Ordnung der Saint-
Simonisten mit ihrer Geisteselite, keinem Geburts- oder Geldadel, – das war akzeptabel, grund-
sätzlich jedenfalls, nicht aber jene völlige Nivellierung der Gesellschaft durch Pariser Kommu-
nisten Babeufscher Provenienz” (1990, 73).
206
breiteten. Ungeheuer groß ist die Anzahl deutscher Handwerker,60 welche
ab und zu nach Frankreich auf Wanderschaft gehen. Wenn ich daher las,
wie norddeutsche Blätter sich darüber lustig machten, daß Börne mit 600
Schneidergesellen auf den Montmartre gestiegen, um ihnen eine Bergpre-
digt zu halten, mußte ich mitleidig die Achsel zucken, aber am wenigsten
über Börne, der eine Saat ausstreute, die früh oder spät die furchtbarsten
Früchte hervorbringt. Er sprach sehr gut, bündig, überzeugend, volksmä-
ßig; nackte, kunstlose Rede, ganz im Bergpredigerton. (Heine 1997 IV, 73)

While at the beginning of the passage it appears that Heine merely disapproves of
the republicanism of the German artisans, favouring instead the allegedly more
sophisticated model of a constitutional monarchy, towards the end of it becomes
evident that more is at stake than simply a mere controversy about different politi-
cal models. With the lower-class artisans, republicanism quickly becomes a fanatic
social republicanism, Heine implies. For Heine, it is Börne who preaches this new
gospel of social revolution to the proletarian masses, which might bear the most
terrible fruits, a proletarian revolution. Heine’s major concern is that the German
proletariat will recognise in Börne a bourgeois prophet of proletarian revolution,
as the allusion to Jesus and his sermon of the mount implies. Much more than
potential jealousy, it is the threat to bourgeois society that motivates Heine’s tirades
against his rival for the role of the German prophet of revolution. Heine deeply
worries that a proletarian social revolution may result in a socio-political system
that will have achieved absolute social equality at the price of a totalitarian suppres-
sion of the bourgeoisie and its cultural traditions. Most forcefully, he articulates
this concern at the end of his Börne essay:

Da kommen zunächst die Radikalen und verschreiben eine Radikalkur, die

am Ende doch nur äußerlich wirkt, höchstens den gesellschaftlichen Grind
vertreibt, aber nicht die innere Fäulnis. Gelänge es ihnen auch, die leidende
Menschheit auf eine kurze Zeit von ihren wildesten Qualen zu befreien, so
geschähe es doch nur auf Kosten der letzten Spuren von Schönheit, die dem
Patienten bis jetzt geblieben sind; häßlich wie ein geheilter Philister, wird
er aufstehen von seinem Krankenlager, und in der häßlichen Spitaltracht,
in dem aschgrauen Gleichheitskostüm wird er sich all sein Lebtag herum-
schleppen müssen. Alle überlieferte Heiterkeit, alle Süße, aller Blumenduft,
alle Poesie wird aus dem Leben herausgepumpt werden, und es wird davon
nichts übrig bleiben, als die Rumfordsche Suppe der Nützlichkeit. – Für die
Schönheit und das Genie wird sich kein Platz finden in dem Gemeinwesen

60 Jacques Grandjonc points out that about three quarters of the German community in Paris at
this time were either artisans or workers (see 1973, 167).
 207
unserer neuen Puritaner, und beide werden fletriert und unterdrückt wer-
den, noch weit betrübsamer als unter dem älteren Regimente. [...] sie passen
nicht in eine Gesellschaft, wo jeder im Mißgefühl der eigenen Mittelmäßig-
keit, alle höhere Begabnis herabzuwürdigen sucht, bis aufs banale Niveau.
(Heine 1997 IV, 140-141)

Heine voices his bourgeois terror of proletarian revolution and an egalitarian so-
ciety (key goals for both the radical early French socialists and the German early
proletarian associations) by displacing bourgeois class fears of an emancipated
proletariat with disquiet about the future of the bourgeois artistic and cultural
tradition. The aesthetic stands in to rationalise and legitimise deep-seated class
fears of the proletariat. One could argue that Heine here uses the appeal to, what
Raymond Williams terms, an elitist aesthetic of “selective tradition” (1977, 115;
Williams’ emphasis) that needs to be preserved from destruction by the class en-
emies. Heine employs this notion to campaign against proletarian social revolution
and to defend the social status quo: the rule of the bourgeoisie over a proletariat.61
Invoking two key traditional concepts of the bourgeois ideology of the aesthetic,
‘beauty’ and ‘genius,’ Heine legitimises his defence of the socioeconomically op-
pressive order of bourgeois capitalism. His understanding of art here is as class-
biased as his social outlook. While Heine pretends to be merely concerned about
the danger that those groups (whom he denounces as the new Puritans) alleg-
edly pose to the bourgeois cultural heritage and tradition – “[a]lle überlieferte
Heiterkeit”, “die Schönheit und das Genie” – in truth he is worried much more
about the fundamental threat that their revolutionary ideology poses to bourgeois
society as a whole. This passage constitutes not merely part of a wider attack on
those authors who – such as Börne – “das ‘Kunstinteresse’ bloß in den Dienst
stellen für das politische Interesse des Tages,” as Jürgen Habermas insists (1992,
149), but also an assault on the concept of social revolution. Suggesting the false
equation of social equality equals levelling down of all cultural and social activities
equals enforced mediocracy, Heine’s aesthetic and cultural concerns constitute a
displacement of his profound anxieties about the proletarian revolution that he

61 Williams understands by this term “an intentionally selective version of a shaping past and a
pre-shaped present, which is then powerfully operative in the process of social and cultural
definition and identification. […] this selection is presented and usually successfully passed off
as ‘the tradition’, ‘the significant past’. What has then to be said about any tradition is that it
is in this sense an aspect of contemporary social and cultural organization, in the interest of the
dominance of a certain class. It is a version of the past which is intended to connect with and
ratify the present” (1977, 115-116; Williams’ emphasis).
208

opposes.62 Whereas in Französische Zustände (1833) he still ridiculed and dismissed

the emerging egalitarian-republican groups as living anachronisms – “Plagiarien
der Vergangenheit,” which conjure up the spectres of a revolutionary past such as
Robespierre and the terror of the French Revolution (cf. Heine 1997 III, 126) –
he later realises that their socialist ideology will form the revolutionary spectre of
the future. While taking this menace ever more seriously throughout the 1830s,
Heine remained adamantly opposed to proletarian social revolution. There is not
the slightest evidence that he moved towards an endorsement of this type of revo-
lution as other contemporary revolutionary authors such as Börne did during that
decade. Whether or not, and the degree to which, this changes throughout the
1840s, I will explore in the following section.

3.2.5 “Ein Fluch dem König, dem König der Reichen”: Heine’s “Die Armen
Weber” (1844) as a Call for Proletarian Social Revolution?

As historians have pointed out, the Silesian Weavers’ Revolt in June 1844 marked
a turning point in the public perception of social misery in Germany.63 It raised
awareness that the socioeconomic tensions might lead to a massive class confron-

62 Most Heine critics play down the extent of Heine’s social anxieties by reducing it to the debate
of art versus politics. For instance, Walter Wehner insists that Heine’s negative judgement on
French early socialism is due to its alleged “Kunstfeindlichkeit.” According to him Heine is
not adverse to proletarian social revolution, as his allegedly positive attitude towards Marx and
Marxism proves (cf. 1980, 42). As one of the few critics, Gerhard Höhn recognises the extent
of Heine’s disquiet about the proletarian social revolution which, he argues, Heine in Börne:
Eine Denkschrift considers a “falsch[e] Revolution”. However, at the same time he re-inscribes
the myth that Heine endorsed the counter-concept “der zeitgemäßen, sozialen Revolution” (cf.
2004, 429).
63 As Wolfgang Büttner highlights (1986, 206) and Jantke and Hilgers’s anthology (1965) of con-
temporary texts on the social situation of the lower classes vividly illustrates, the German public
had already been aware of the social question before the Revolt. However, the Silesian Weavers’
Revolt and the ensuing heightened perception of social misery had a catalysing effect since the
rebellion displayed the urgency of the social crisis. As for instance Wolfgang Hardtwig em-
phasises, the extent of social misery and exploitation was particularly extreme in this region
throughout the 1840s (see 1998, 28-29): a verdict confirmed by Büttner (1986, 206-207).
For a summary of contemporary reactions and the social crisis that caused it, see for instance
Wehner 1980 and Büttner 1986. Moreover, there also exists a very comprehensive anthology of
texts engaging with the crisis. They reach from contemporary newspaper and journal articles to
literary works such as poems and excerpts from social novels by Ernst Willkomm, Louise Otto,
Louise Aston, etc. (see Kroneberg & Schloesser 1979).
 209

tation between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Summing up its great impact
on public opinion, Wolfgang Büttner emphasises that few events “im deutschen
Vormärz haben so viel öffentliches Aufsehen erregt” as this Revolt. As he points
out, contemporary observers hotly debated its status and its causes: was it a spon-
taneous, localised hunger revolt or a “Symptom für allgemeine große sozialökono-
mische und gesellschaftliche Veränderungen” (1986, 202)? For the socialist writer
Wilhelm Wolff it was clearly a vivid manifestation of the latter. As he insists in
1845, the Revolt has even opened the eyes of those observers who most tenaciously
had ignored the widening social gulf and the heightening of social tensions in
Germany. According to him, after the Revolt it has become impossible to deny any
longer the extent of social misery that he regards as ubiquitous in contemporary
society. For him it is the clearest symptom in Germany yet that the principles of
the capitalist economic order are inimical to social justice and equality:

Ganz besonders aber wird sich unser Blick auf die Zustände der Weber im
Gebirge zu richten haben, da hier die unausbleiblichen Folgen eines der Ge-
rechtigkeit, der Gleichheit und der Brüderlichkeit feindlichen Prinzips, in
welchem unsere jetzigen Verhältnisse sämtlich wurzeln, am ersten, greifbars-
ten und in der betrübendsten Weise ans Tageslicht getreten sind und nun
selbst dem blödesten Auge nicht mehr verborgen bleiben können. (Wolff
1965, 157)

Reactions to the crushed Revolt ranged from the founding of various philanthrop-
ic societies, which are harshly dismissed by Wolff in a hyperbolic metaphor as “ein
Tropfen auf eine brennend heiße Sandwüste” (1965, 167) (the original proverb
goes: ‘ein Tropfen auf den heißen Stein’),64 to an increasing radicalisation of parts
of the German socialists (see for instance Bouvier 1986, 296-298). Subsequently,
its vanguard, among them Marx and Engels, advanced a concept of proletarian
social revolution. As discussed earlier, Marx’s radicalisation as well as his move
towards proletarian social revolution emerges prominently in his article series
“Kritische Randglossen” (August 1844) that marks a direct reaction to the rebel-
lion. Earlier even than Marx, Engels casts the Revolt as a proletarian protest against
capitalist socioeconomic exploitation. Writing in the Chartist paper The Northern
Star (Vol. 7/No. 346/29 June 1844), he identifies as its underlying cause “the fac-

64 Engels, in the preface to Die Lage der arbeitenden Klasse in England (1845), is as scathing as
Wolff in his verdict on these philanthropic associations. Accusing their members of an ideal-
ist lack of consciousness of the actual condition of the proletariat, he satirises them as “die
wohlmeinenden ‘Vereine zur Hebung der arbeitenden Klassen’, in denen jetzt unsre Bourgeoisie
die soziale Frage mißhandelt” (MEW II, 233).
210

tory system with all its consequences.” According to him, this leads to “oppression
and toil for the many, riches and wealth for the few” in Germany as well as in Brit-
ain (MEGA III, 609), thus placing the Silesian Revolt into a wider international
framework. Wilhelm Wolff also moved towards proletarian social revolution in the
aftermath of the events in Silesia. Summarising the lessons of the Silesian Weav-
ers’ Revolt, he maintains in the journal Vorwärts! (No. 98/7 December 1844) that
in order for “die Gegensätze von Eigentümern und Eigentumslosen, von Reichen
und Armen” to disappear, it seems necessary that “das Drama, dessen vorausgewor-
fene lange Schatten wir im Sommer an den Bergen der Eule erblickten, von der
arbeitenden Masse zu Ende geführt werden muß.” After the spectacle performed
in Silesia, social reform can no longer be regarded as a viable option, “weil die Ver-
blendung der Besitzenden [...] fast zu groß ist, als daß auf eine friedliche Lösung
des gesellschaftlichen Problems zu hoffen wäre” (quoted in Büttner 1986, 228).
The catalytic effect of the Revolt was not limited to the socialists and their ideol-
ogy. The outrage that the Prussian army’s massacre of the rebellious weavers caused
further hardened the liberal opposition towards the Prussian monarchic state. Yet,
at the same time the weavers’ defiant violent resistance to police and regular army
as well as their large-scale destruction of bourgeois property also heightened the
anxiety about the spectre of an impending proletarian social revolution.65 This
“Drama” (as Wolff calls it) also boosted an unprecedented literary reaction that
motivated nearly every political poet (e.g. Karl Beck, Georg Weerth, Ferdinand
Freiligrath, Gustav Pfau, Louise Otto, Hermann Püttmann) to produce a poem
about the event.66 However, it is Heine’s “Die schlesischen Weber” (the revised
version of his original poem “Die armen Weber”) that has become the definitive
literary text dealing with the Revolt. This is the earlier, less well-known version:

65 The weavers not only destroyed the mansions and factories of several entrepreneurs, but initially
also managed to beat back the Prussian troops which fired into crowds killing at least 11 protest-
ers. For depictions of the events and course of the crushed Revolt, see for instance Wehner 1980,
17-19 and Büttner 1986, 213-224. For a contemporary socialist depiction and interpretation of
the Revolt, see Wolff 1965. Bourgeois worries about imminent proletarian socio-revolutionary
action were further heightened by widespread workers’ revolts in the industrial districts of Bohe-
mia (including unrest in Prague) during the same year, 1844. For an essay that investigates these
and their impact, see Klíma 1986.
66 For a selection, see Wehner 1980, 83-95. Weerth’s poem “Sie saßen auf den Bänken” (1846)
that deals with the reaction to the Revolt in England will be discussed in chapter 4.3. By draw-
ing upon various contemporary poems, plays and novels, Christina von Hodenberg illustrates
how these literary texts construe different myths of the Revolt according to the ideology of their
authors (see Hodenberg 1997, 111-150).
 211
Im düstern Auge keine Thräne,
Sie sitzen am Webstuhl und fletschen die Zähne:
“Altdeutschland, wir weben dein Leichentuch,
Wir heben hinein den dreifachen Fluch!
Wir weben! Wir weben!

“Ein Fluch dem Gotte, dem blinden, dem tauben,

Zu dem wir gebetet mit kindlichem Glauben;
Wir haben vergebens gehofft und geharrt,
Er hat uns geäfft und gefoppt und genarrt.
Wir weben! Wir weben!

“Ein Fluch dem König’, dem König’ der Reichen,

Den unser Elend nicht konnte erweichen,
Der uns den letzten Groschen erpreßt,
Und uns wie Hunde erschießen läßt!
Wir weben! Wir weben!

“Ein Fluch dem falschen Vaterlande,

Wo nur gedeihen Lüg’ und Schande,
Wo nur Verwesung und Todtengeruch –
Altdeutschland, wir weben dein Leichentuch!
Wir weben! Wir weben! H. H. (Heine 1844, 1)67

“Die Schlesischen Weber” has been canonised as one of the greatest German revo-
lutionary poems ever written. Critics tend to regard this poem as an endorsement
of proletarian social revolution more than any other of Heine’s texts. Not only do
nearly all of them – irrespective of their differing ideological persuasions – agree
67 The poem was first published in Vorwärts! Pariser Deutscher Zeitschrift (No. 55/10 July 1844).
Die armen Weber differs as follows from “Die schlesischen Weber” as Heine renamed it when it
was re-published in Püttmann’s Album in 1846: Stanza 1 line 1 starts with the personal pronoun
in the third person plural instead of the first: Sie sitzen am Webstuhl” instead “Wir sitzen am
Webstuhl”. In stanza 2 the first two lines read “Ein Fluch dem Gotte, dem blinden, dem tau-
ben / Zu dem wir gebetet mit kindlichem Glauben;” (ll. 6-7; Heine 1844, 1) instead of “Ein
Fluch dem Gotte, zu dem wir gebeten/ In Winterskälte und Hungersnöten” in the later version
(Heine 1997 VI, 455). The first version lacks the fifth stanza altogether, with the fourth stanza
incorporating the image of the weaving of the winding sheet. The last two stanzas in the later
version read: “Ein Fluch dem falschen Vaterlande, / Wo nur gedeihen Schmach und Schande,
/ Wo jede Blume früh geknickt, / Wo Fäulnis und Moder den Wurm erquickt – / Wir weben,
wir weben! // Das Schiffchen fliegt, der Webstuhl kracht, / Wir weben emsig Tag und Nacht –
Altdeutschland, wir weben dein Leichentuch, / Wir weben hinein den dreifachen Fluch, / Wir
weben, wir weben!” (Heine 1997 IV, 455)
212

on this point,68 but largely it was also very favourably received by the early Ger-
man working-class and socialist movement.69 Questioning this dominant read-
ing of “Die armen Weber” as a socio-revolutionary, or even a socialist, poem, the
contextual analysis of it will serve me as the final test case to decide whether Heine
genuinely moved towards an endorsement of proletarian social revolution.

“Die Armen Weber”: A Socialist Poem?

In my opinion, any interpretation that regards “Die armen Weber” as a socio-

revolutionary, let alone a socialist poem, requires a considerable degree of mis-
interpretation, or at least a distortion, of its ideology. One of the earliest exam-
ples of such a tendency can be detected in Engels’ reading and translation of the
poem. Writing for Robert Owen’s newspaper The New Moral World (No. 25/13
December 1844), he hails Heine’s “Die armen Weber” as “one of the most pow-
erful poems [he] know[s] of.” What is more important, he singles it out among
the “pieces” in Heine’s recent “volume of political poetry” as the one that is most
overtly “preaching Socialism” (Marx & Engels 1975a IV, 232-233). The fact that
now also “Henry Heine, the most eminent of all living German poets has joined
our ranks” (232) proves for Engels the claim that there are fast advances of Com-
munism in Germany, a claim that his article sets out to demonstrate. However, his
assertion that Heine had become a socialist is as much a product of wishful think-
ing as is his claim that “the rapidity with which Socialism has progressed in this

68 For example Alexander Schweickert speaks of “kommunistischer Kampflyrik” and terms it

“eines der besten kommunistischen Gedichte überhaupt” (1969, 42-43). Walter Grab and Uwe
Friesel see the “ausgebeutete Proleteriat” prepare the social revolution in one of “der massivsten
Anklagen gegen Ausbeutung, Verlogenheit und Unmenschlichkeit der herrschenden Klassen,
die man in der deutschen Literatur findet” (1973, 192-193). Walter Wehner recognises in the
poem a proclamation of the revolutionary protest of the masses (1980, 39). From “einer so-
zialrevolutionären Perspektive,” Heine’s poem casts the weavers as “die Totengräber der alten
Gesellschaft”, Wehner argues in an allusion to Das Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei (1848).
As he maintains, Heine further regards the proletariat as the determining force of future soci-
ety (cf. 1980, 63). Jan Christoph Hauschild und Michael Werner explicitly differentiate “Die
schlesischen Weber” from the other poems in the cycle Zeitgedichte. Whereas the latter aim for
the “satirischen Zertrümmerung reaktionärer Ideen und Manifestationen,” they regard the for-
mer as a pronouncedly socio-revolutionary poem. They back up their claim by referring to the
verdict of Heine’s friend Alexandre Weill who termed the poem the “‘Marseillaise der deutschen
Arbeiter’“ (cf. 2002, 105-106).
69 For a study of the poem’s reception among proletarian factions, see Füllner, Hauschild & Kau-
koreit 1985.
 213

country [i.e. Germany] is quite miraculous” (229). Yet to prove his point about
“Die armen Weber” being a socialist text, Engels does not shy away from altering
Heine’s poem considerably. In his translation that he gives in the article he adds
the following line to the first stanza: “We have suffered and hunger’d long enough,”
the weavers declare in Engels’ version (232), thus indicating that their protest is
directed against exploitation and material suffering as well as clearly stating their
socio-revolutionary intentions.70 Declaring that they have put far too long with
starvation and material suffering, they implicitly vow to change through contin-
ued social resistance. By contrast, the German original, which reads “Sie sitzen am
Webstuhl und fletschen die Zähne” (l. 2; Heine 1844, 1), foregrounds the weav-
ers’ resignation and impotent rage rather than expressing their conscious decision
to try to alter their material situation. When Engels makes Heine’s weavers voice
such a defiant call for further socio-revolutionary action, in spite of their rebellion
having been defeated, he invests the weavers’ announcement in the next line to
weave the shroud of old Germany with a pronounced socio-revolutionary inten-
tion. However, in the German original it is far more ambiguous whether the weav-
ers genuinely pursue proletarian socio-revolutionary goals with their protest. At
least on a literal level the threefold curse (“Ein Fluch dem Gotte”, “Ein Fluch dem
König’” and “Ein Fluch dem falschen Vaterlande”) that the proletarians weave into
the winding sheet is not at all directed against capitalist socioeconomic violence
and their exploiters, but against the unholy trinity that epitomises the Prussian
state, “dem Gotte,” “dem König,” and “dem Vaterland.” Undercutting his reading
of the poem as a piece of socialist agitation, Engels points out this aspect of Heine’s
poem himself when he explains to the British readers that the threefold curse in his
poem “refers to the battle-cry of the Prussians in 1813 – ‘With God for King and
fatherland!’ which has been ever since a favourite saying of the loyal party” (232).
By mentioning the date of 1813 and locating the origin of this slogan in the Wars
of Liberation against Napoleon, Engels inadvertently emphasises that the main
thrust of Heine’s critique might be directed against the anachronistic nature of the
German monarchic states (in particular Prussia), and not primarily an exposure of
modern capitalist socioeconomic violent practices. He thus contradicts his own as-
sertion that Heine’s poem adopts a socialist perspective on the social condition of
the proletariat while highlighting its socio-revolutionary leanings and the exploita-
tive nature of contemporary bourgeois society.
70 Klaus Briegleb suggests that this additional line in Engels’ translation “vermuten läßt, daß er
eine handschriftliche Version bei seiner Durchreise nach England mitgenommen hat, als er
Ende August 44 in Paris ist und seine Freundschaft mit Marx begründet” (Heine 1997 IV, 970);
a not altogether convincing conjecture since there is no evidence that Marx ever possessed an
alternative manuscript version of the poem.
214

This apparent paradox in Heine’s poem, its fierce attacks on the Prussian state
and monarch on the one hand, and the seemingly socio-revolutionary anger of
its speakers, the weavers, on the other, causes severe hermeneutical difficulties for
Engels as well as most modern critics. Frequently they have to solve it by playing
down the importance of the poem’s political attack on the Prussian state in favour
of its alleged socio-revolutionary critique of capitalist society. In contrast to the
literary critics, historians tend to be more sceptical about Heine’s poem being a call
for proletarian social revolution. Christina von Hodenberg, who has written a key
study on the Weavers’ Revolt, underlines that Heine’s poem “the Silesian weavers
are celebrated as the prophets of the coming revolution in Prussia” rather than the
prophets of social revolution (2002, 39-40). As far as I can see, there is merely one
dissenting critical voice among literary critics: that of Ludwig Marcuse. He sug-
gests that Heine stages in “Die schlesischen Weber” an assault on the Prussian state
and not an attack on the bourgeoisie. Unlike Marx who, in his “Kritische Randg-
lossen zu dem Artikel: ‘Der König von Preußen und die Socialreform. Von einem
Preußen” (1844), uses the occasion of the Silesian Weavers’ Revolt to undertake a
“soziologisch[e] Analyse der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft dreier europäischer Länder,”
(Germany, England and France), Heine, in his poem, reveals the reactionary na-
ture of German neo-absolutism:

Heine seziert nicht die Bourgeoisie, sondern apostrophiert im höchsten Af-

fekt Deutschland. Es geht nicht gegen ein Gesellschaftssystem, sondern ge-
gen ein Land, Preußen, mit seinem “Gott, König und Vaterland” [...] Diese
Dreieinigkeit wird als preußische, nicht als bürgerliche Gottheit ironisiert.
(Marcuse 1980, 237)

One might go even further than Marcuse and argue that the social criticism present
in Heine’s poem constitutes a typical example of the widespread practice to mount
a “Kritik der sozialen Verhältnisse” in order to voice a disguised critique “der Bour-
geoisie an der Machtausübung der Feudalklasse in den deutschen Staaten,” which
the historian Wolfgang Büttner has identified as common in contemporary liberal
discourse (cf. 1986, 205). This differs fundamentally from Marx’s interpretation of
revolt as a proletarian rebellion against capitalist exploitation. To cast the King and
the Prussian state apparatus as the opponent of the weavers for him represents an
ideological distortion of the conflict between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.
As Marx maintains, the Prussian King “hat seinen unmittelbaren Gegensatz in der
Politik, in dem Liberalismus.” Thus “[f ]ür den König existirt der Gegensatz des
Proletariats eben so wenig, wie der König für das Proletariat existirt” (MEGA II,
449). In Heine’s “Armen Weber,” however, the King features prominently, and his
 215

indifference towards the material situation of the weavers constitutes a key target
of their attack.

“Die Armen Weber” and “Das Blutgericht”: Staging the Proletarian Voice

To ascertain whether Heine’s poem goes beyond what Büttner and Marx identify
as a liberal, essentially political, critique of the German states and whether the
poem adopts a proletarian socio-revolutionary position, I will compare its ideology
to that of “Das Blutgericht” (1844). Marx regards it as proof for his key contention
that the Silesian weavers possessed a socio-revolutionary, proletarian conscious-
ness. Although this song of the rebellious Silesian weavers received broad public
attention, critics have so far shied away from a thorough intertextual comparison.71
To do so means moving outside the bourgeois ideology of the aesthetic that dis-
misses the song as of little literary ‘value.’ Thus, in a pronounced break with critical
orthodoxy, the main focus will be on “die inhaltlichen Aussagen” (Marcuse 1980,
237) and the ideology of the two poems rather than the rhetorical intricacies of
Heine’s poem, its play with sounds, its rhythm which imitate the weaving process,
the form of the folk ballad, and so forth.72 Conversely, I will not dwell upon the al-
leged lack of such intricacies in “Das Blutgericht.”73 Separating form and content,
I would maintain that the ideology of Heine’s poem emerges only when one is not
deluded by its rhetorical brilliance, its high “Poetizitätsfaktor,” as Wehner (1980,
38) calls it. For it is precisely its form, with its stirring and rousing rhythm and
chorus that creates the false impression that Heine’s poem endorses proletarian so-
cial revolution rather than any of the ideological tenets it puts forward. As Gerhard
71 Wulf Segebrecht analyses “Das Blutgericht” without comparing it to Heine’s poem (1979).
Walter Wehner in his study of “Die schlesischen Weber” and its contexts does the same (1980,
29-30). He even denies categorically any link between the two poems, “[e]ine direkte Verbind-
ung zum ‘Blutgericht’ besteht nicht” (1980, 40).
72 For an analysis that particularly foregrounds the pyrotechnics of stylistic devices in Heine’s
poem, see Wehner 1980, 37-41.
73 Wehner maintains that “Das Blutgericht” is characterised by its utter lack of any “[ä]sthetische
Qualitäten” with its incongruent images, absence of rhyme, and its “holprigen Verse” (cf. 1980,
25). Ironically, he thus confirms the verdict in the liberal Morgenblatt für gebildete Leser (22
August 1844) that alleges that it has “nicht den geringsten poetischen Werth” (cf. Anonymous
1844d, 808). While, in contrast to Heine’s highly aestheticised weaver poem, it was never in-
tended as a work of art but as a song of social protest and agitation, Wehner’s verdict is a sim-
plistic assertion that needs to be qualified. As my analysis will show, the weavers’ song skilfully
employs its drastic images to drive its ideological message home, even punning with the seman-
tics of certain words.
216

Höhn highlights “die agitatorische Kraft des Gedichts geht von seinem verbissenen
Rhythmus, von dem fünfmal im Refrain und insgesamt fünfzehnmal wiederholten
‘Wir weben’ aus, das die mechanische Bewegung des Webens nachahmt” (2004,
111).
“Das Blutgericht,” of which various versions exist, was the song of the rebel-
lious weavers that was instrumental in fuelling the uprising. According to the Voss-
ische Zeitung (No. 144/22 June 1844) the song “eilte wie ein Aufruf von Haus zu
Haus; es fiel als Zündstoff in gärende Gemüter” (quoted in Büttner 1986, 213).
Although it lacks any explicit socio-revolutionary call, such as to attack the capital-
ists and their system of exploitation, it can with some justification be termed the
“Marseillaise der Notleidenden.” This term, which seems to have been coined by
the contemporary socialist Wilhelm Wolff, sums up the great socio-revolutionary
power of the stirring weavers’ song (1965, 169).74 In this respect it performs a dou-
ble function. First, as an ideological form it is a means for the weavers of gaining
consciousness of the unjust socioeconomic process, the adverse effects of which
they are painfully experiencing. Second, it ferments a feeling of collective social
identity, a rudimentary proletarian class-consciousness that harbours strong socio-
revolutionary potential. It angrily exposes both the exploitative practices of the
entrepreneurs, the crass contrast between abundant wealth and utter starvation, as
well as foregrounding the strong class hostility between the proletarian weavers and
the bourgeois capitalists, a characteristic feature of the song that Marx emphasises:

Zunächst erinnere man sich an das Weberlied, an diese kühne Parole des
Kampfes, worin Herd, Fabrik, Distrikt nicht einmal erwähnt werden, son-
dern das Proletariat sogleich seinen Gegensatz gegen die Gesellschaft des
Privateigenthums in schlagender, scharfer, rücksichtsloser, gewaltsamer Wei-
se herausschreit. Der schlesische Aufstand beginnt grade damit, womit die
französischen und englischen Arbeiter-Aufstände enden, mit dem Bewuß-
tsein über das Wesen des Proletariats. (MEGA II, 459; Marx’s emphasis)

While it is not true that the song treats the class antagonism, proletariat versus
bourgeoisie, on a general abstract level – on the contrary, the entrepreneurs are
explicitly mentioned by name as well as by their respective exploitative practices –
Marx nevertheless is right when he stresses that the song expresses a pronounced
proletarian awareness, “das Bewußtsein über das Wesen des Proletariats”: the
concrete consciousness that the alienation of labour leads to an impoverishment
74 Wolff could draw on similar expression that circulated in the public discourse on the Revolt.
On 16 August 1844 a correspondent of the Morgenblatt für gebildete Leser calls the song “die
verbotene Marseillaise der Weber” (Anonymous 1844d, 808).
 217

of the producers and, simultaneously, to the capitalists amassing unprecedented

wealth. The concrete quality of the song has detracted scholars from recognising
the wider class conflict it expresses. Christina von Hodenberg maintains that the
“song clearly emphasized the local character of the event” and criticises Marx’s ab-
stract, socialist-internationalist reading of “Das Blutgericht” as “wishful thinking”
(2002, 48). However, in her justified critique of Marx’s interpretation of the song
she overlooks how its long enumeration of concrete, local examples of exploita-
tion amounts to the more abstract awareness that certain principles govern these
practices. For instance, the accusation against the manufacturers that “was dann
euch zum Gewinne fehlt, / wird Armen abgerissen” identifies a key characteristic
of capitalistic maximisation of profit: to dump the wage when the profit margin is
not high enough (Stanza 20; quoted in Wehner 1980, 24). Still some critics deny
that poem voices any socioeconomic insights. As Wulf Segebrecht argues, “[d]as
Weberlied enthält keine Hinweise auf die allgemeinen wirtschaftlichen und sozial-
geschichtlichen Ursachen des dargestellten Kontrastes” between the weavers and
manufacturers (1979, 105). Instead reduce its importance solely to its “Authen-
tizität,” as the true ‘voice’ of the angry weavers (cf. 107). This verdict seems driven
by a bourgeois arrogance that categorically denies to the proletarians the capability
of any critical analysis.75
A closer look at the poem reveals more features that are inconsistent with the
thesis that it merely depicts the concrete, lived experience of the Silesian weavers
and does not at all express a wider proletarian consciousness. As the use of the
generic term “Armen” instead of ‘Weber’ or ‘uns’ in “Das Blutgericht” strongly
suggests, the weavers are aware that the capitalist mechanisms of exploitation are
not only at work in their profession, but also symptomatic of the contemporary
industrial and class relations in bourgeois society. As weavers they are subject to the
same injustice as other factions among the poor:

15

Ihr fangt stets an zu jeder Zeit

Den Lohn herabzubringen,
75 Ironically, parts of the contemporary public questioned the authenticity of the song and tried
to assign it to a bourgeois author. This suggests that it expresses ideological tenets that were
deemed beyond the mental horizon of the weavers. While, as Grab & Friesel point out, for a
long time the radical journalist and writer Eduard Pelz was suspected of having been its author
(see 1973, 191), the Berlin correspondent of the Morgenblatt für gebildete Leser entertains the
possibility that a dissolute student was its author: “Möglich, daß einen verdorbenen Studenten,
einen Winkelconsulenten, deren sich viele im Lande umtreiben und die Landleute aufhetzen,
seine Muse dazu in einer Branntweinschenke angefeuert hat” (Anonymous 1844a, 732).
218
Und andre Schurken sind bereit,
Dem Beispiel nachzuringen.

[…]

20

Von euch wird für ein Lumpengeld

Die Waare hingeschmissen,
Was euch dann zum Gewinne fehlt,
wird Armen abgerissen. (Quoted in Wehner 1980, 23 & 24)

The song portrays the industrial relations as a bitter fight between producers and
manufacturers that amounts to class war. In this confrontation it is the capitalists
who mercilessly exploit the proletarians by cheating them out of the profit of their
labour and dumping their wages. The pleonastic reiteration of “stets” and “zu jeder
Zeit” not only stresses that the Silesian manufacturers employ these tactics all the
time, but also identifies these practices as eternal laws that govern capitalist profi-
teering. One could go as far as to call these observations proto-Marxist insights
into the socioeconomic workings of capitalism (lowering of wages to maximise
gains and the capitalists’ profiteering of the surplus value of proletarian labour). As
Engels similarly asserts in his second article for The Northern Star, the “causes of
these affrays were the incredible sufferings of these poor weavers, produced by low
wages, machinery, and the greed and avarice of the manufacturers” (MEGA III,
611).
In its strong condemnation of both the manufacturers and the socioeconomic
system that permits them to exploit the poor, “Das Blutgericht” adopts a more
socio-revolutionary stance than many bourgeois texts that deal with the rebellion.
This aspect of the song also questions the interpretations of both modern histori-
ans and contemporary observers that deny any socially conscious dimension to the
uprising. As the radical German journalist Arnold Ruge asserts in his article “Der
König von Preußen und die Socialreform” in Vorwärts! (No. 60/27 July 1844), the
Revolt failed because it had a purely localised character and the Silesian weavers –
as well as all other German proletarians – have (at least until now) been utterly
lacking any political or social consciousness:

Die deutschen Armen sind nicht klüger, als die armen Deutschen, d. h. sie
sehen nirgends über ihren Heerd, ihre Fabrik, ihren Distrikt hinaus; die
ganze Frage ist von der alles durchdringenden Seele bis jetzt noch verlassen.
 219
Es werden alle Aufstände in Blut und Unverstand ersticken, die in dieser
heillosen Isolirung des Menschen von dem Gemeinwesen und ihrer Ge-
danken von den socialen Principien ausbrechen (Ruge 1844, 4; Ruge‘s em-
phasis)

The devastating criticism of the workings of capitalist exploitation that “Das Blut-
gericht” mounts (and that Ruge ignores) is conspicuously lacking in Heine’s pre-
sumably socio-revolutionary poem. In sharp contrast to the song, in Heine’s “Die
armen Weber” the entrepreneurs escape any criticism. In the revised version of
his poem, “Die schlesischen Weber”, the reference to “Winterskälte und Hun-
gersnöten” (l. 7; Heine 1997 IV, 455) may even create the impression that natu-
ral phenomena, such as winter’s frost and famine,76 are to blame for the weavers’
sufferings rather than capitalist business practices. It also recalls Ruge’s mistaken
verdict that all Germans regard the Revolt as nothing more than a natural disas-
ter, “wie irgend eine lokale Wassers- oder Hungersnoth” (1844, 4). However, also
in the original version of “Die armen Weber,” the manufacturers are not even
mentioned. The blame is put on the King of Prussia instead who – rather than
the capitalists – is accused of depriving the weavers of their last penny. While it is
historically accurate that tithes and taxes exacerbated the destitution of the weavers
(as even contemporary socialist writers such as Wilhelm Wolff acknowledge),77 it
considerably distorts the picture to cast the Prussian monarch and his state as the
main cause for the weavers’ desperate socioeconomic condition:

“Ein Fluch dem König’, dem König’ der Reichen,

Den unser Elend nicht konnte erweichen,
Der uns den letzten Groschen erpreßt,

76 The 1840s saw widespread crop failures and famines across Europe, crises that precipitated the
outbreak of the European revolutions in 1848. Among them was the potato blight of 1845
that struck many countries across Europe and led to the notorious ‘Irish Potato Famine’ (1845-
49). For a German socialist poem that engages with the trans-European potato blight of 1845
see Georg Weerth’s “Das Lied von der verunglückten Kartoffel” (unpublished, written 1845)
(Weerth 1956 I, 197-198).
77 Wolff devotes a considerable part of his investigation to the socioeconomic causes of the weav-
ers’ miserable living conditions: how remnants of feudal levies, services, and taxes worsen their
material situation (see 1965, 158-162). However, a concrete summary that he gives of the taxes,
levies, interest on a loan etc., of a comparatively well-off weaver shows that the taxes to the
state did not constitute the major part of these fees, but rather interest and mortgage payments.
“Grundsteuer an den Staat jährlich” und “Klassensteuer” together make up 3 Thaler and 15
Silbergroschen out of a total of 19 Thaler and 5 Silbergroschen, compared to an annual income
of 60 Thaler. The two biggest expenditures are “Schuldgeld [sic] für 2-3 Kinder” of 4 Thaler and
“Zins eines auf dem Hause stehenden Kapitals von 100 Tlr” of 5 Thaler (cf. 1965, 165).
220
Und uns wie Hunde erschießen läßt!
Wir weben! Wir weben!

“Ein Fluch dem falschen Vaterlande,

Wo nur gedeihen Lüg’ und Schande,
Wo nur Verwesung und Todtengeruch –
Altdeutschland, wir weben dein Leichentuch!
Wir weben! Wir weben! (ll. 11-20; Heine 1844, 1)

Ihr Schurken all, ihr Satansbrut,

Ihr höllischen Kujone,
Ihr freßt den78 Armen Hab und Gut,
Und Fluch wird euch zum Lohne!

Ihr seyd die Quelle aller Not,

Die hier den Armen drücket;
Ihr seyd’s, die ihm das trocken Brot
Noch vor dem Mund wegrücket. (Quoted in Wehner 1980, 22)

The direct comparison between both poems illustrates how Heine’s poem spares
the bourgeoisie, while the weavers’ song severely indicts the capitalists of crimes
against the poor. In both the early version of the poem, “Die armen Weber,” as
well as the later, “Die schlesischen Weber,” the monarch and the anachronistic
neo-absolutist German states are depicted as the sources of the weavers’ abject so-
cioeconomic condition. In “Das Blutgericht,” by contrast, the capitalists and their
business practices are regarded as the single source, not merely of the weavers’ but
of wider proletarian misery. This is expressed by a general statement that employs
the generic term “the poor” rather than the specific one ‘weavers’ or the personal
pronoun ‘us’: “Ihr seyd die Quelle aller Not, / Die hier den Armen drücket.” Un-
like in Heine’s poem in which the weavers utter a curse against “dem König, dem
König der Reichen,” the Silesian weavers in their song direct their curse against the
rich capitalists,79 a difference that Wehner also points out. He does not, however,
consider how this intertextual reference reflects back on the ideology of Heine’s
78 A variant reads “der Armen Hab und Gut” (Büttner 1986, 213 and Grab & Friesel 1973, 189).
79 This difference cannot be simply be explained by the class difference between the authors of
the two poems. For instance in the poem “Der Leineweber” (1847) by the bourgeois social-
 221

poem (see 1980, 40). In a pun on “Lohn” as ‘wage’ in the literal sense of the word
and ‘merit’ in its figurative sense, the weavers in “Das Blutgericht” imply that the
capitalists have well deserved the weavers’ curse for paying them pitiful wages. In
the “Die armen Weber” it is the king who only protects the interests of the rich
and has incurred the weavers’ wrath. It was he, Heine’s weavers allege, who first
exploited them and then had them killed as they rebelled.

Moral Outrage and the Collapse of the Moral Economy in “Das Blutgericht”
und “Die armen Weber”

I would argue that the accusations that Heine’s weavers raise (as well as the ones the
writers of “Das Blutgericht” put forward) can only be fully understood within the
framework of Edward Thompson’s concept of the “moral economy” (see chapter
2.4). As pointed out, it presupposes that a certain moral framework governed the
relation between the classes and that, if violated, legitimated forceful actions by the
poor to redress the ethical balance. Although practically no longer in operation,
this concept still has an impact on the ethical framework of the poor, functioning
as a “residual” social ideology, “on the basis of some residue […] of some previ-
ous social formation” (Raymond Williams 2005, 40). In Heine’s poem the social
relationships between monarch and his destitute subjects are emptied of any moral
imperatives; in the weavers’ song it is the industrial relations between master and
workers that are now governed solely by the cash nexus. In “Das Blutgericht” the
concept of a moral economy is shown to be defunct; a crucial point Christina
von Hodenberg overlooks when she attempts to explain the entire Revolt within
such a framework (see 2002, 51-54). At least the speakers of “Das Blutgericht” are
evidently aware that the relationships between the rich and the poor are no longer
governed by any ethical considerations but by the amoral laws of capitalism. Chris-
tian ethical values are merely “ein schön Gefühl” (Stanza 11; quoted in Wehner
1980, 23) that no longer has any bearing on the behaviour of the manufacturers.
It has been replaced by the capitalist categorical imperative of profit maximisation
at all cost that affects even those who still harbour any ethical feelings towards the
poor:

republican poet Ludwig Pfau, the starving weaver directly curses the capitalist, his “Herrn” as in
“Das Blutgericht,” and not God or the King as in Heine’s poem (cf. Pfau 1993, 53).
222
21

Sind ja noch welche, die der Schmerz

Der armen Leut beweget,
In deren Busen noch ein Herz
Voll mitgefühle [sic] schläget.

22

Die müssen, von der Zeit gedrängt

Auch in das Gleis einlenken,
Und Euer Beispiel eingedenk
Sich in den Lohn einschränken. (Quoted in Wehner 1980, 24-25)

It is no longer the moral failings of individuals, but the law of the time – that
of industrial capitalism – that governs working relationships and determines the
behaviour of the manufacturer. They are “von der Zeit gedrängt”; a statement that
contradicts Segebrecht’s assertion that poem lacks any “Geschichtsdeutung” (1979,
107). Similarly to the speakers of the weaver’s song, Wilhelm Wolff maintains
that the situation of the Silesian weavers has shown that any ethical values have
been completely superseded by the “Nützlichkeitsprinzip, d. h. die Selbstsucht [...
die] rät, dem Armen so wenig als möglich zu geben, wenn er arbeitslos oder -un-
fähig ist” (1965, 159). Recognising these egoistical considerations as the necessary
principle of the manufacturers’ behaviour, the weavers have taken a decisive step
towards acquiring an awareness of the position that they occupy as proletarians
within the capitalist system of production. While they still expose the manufactur-
ers who solely adhere to these as bestial and savage, they acknowledge at the same
time that to appeal to their moral sense is futile as the market pressure on them
is too high. Employing the verb ‘fressen’ which normally relates to animals, the
capitalists are first likened to animals which “freß[en]” the possessions of the poor
so that they will always be able “den besten Braten [zu] fressen” (Stanza 6; quoted
in Wehner 1980, 22) . In Stanzas 10 and 11 allegations of savagery are taken to an
extreme when the capitalists’ act of depriving the proletarians of their products is
metaphorically portrayed as an act of cannibalism:

10

Man denke sich diese Noth

und Elend dieser Armen,
Zu Hause oft kein Bissen Brot
Ist das nicht zum Erbarmen?
 223
11

Erbarmen, ha! ein schön Gefühl,

Euch Kannibalen fremde
Und jede[r] kennt schon euer Ziel
Der Armen Haut und Hemde (Quoted in Wehner 1980, 23).

As the song forcefully illustrates with these cannibals hunting relentlessly for prof-
it, the Christian values of pity and charity have lost their meaning. The weavers
allege in their poem that the greed for profit has led to sustained ruthless exploita-
tion, absolved the capitalists from any remaining ethical guilt, and degraded them
to the moral state of savage cannibals. As such, they not only rob the proletarians
of their products, their “Hemde,” but even appear to devour parts of their bodies,
their “Haut,” to maximise their profit. While the value system of the weavers is still
rooted within the moral economy, they no longer harbour any illusions that the
profit-driven manufacturers will ever adhere to its anachronistic norms, as these
stark images of dehumanisation illustrate.
The extent to which the savage laws of the market lead to degeneration, to a
dehumanisation of the manufacturers, becomes evident in the harsh indictment of
them being cannibals. This stark image expresses the extent of the physical damage
that the entrepreneurs inflict upon the proletarians that they exploit. At the same
time it categorises them as being outside the ethical norms of civilised humanity.
The image’s rhetorical and ideological force is further heightened by the alliteration
which turns “Haut und Hemde” into an actual hendiadys. Robbing the produc-
ers of the product – and thus of the profit of their labour – virtually amounts to
murdering them, it is implied.
Such devastating criticism of capitalist manufacturers cannot be found in
Heine’s poem, or for that matter anywhere else in his oeuvre. As pointed out, the
only reference to capitalists is an indirect one through the persona of the Prussian
King, “dem König der Reichen.” One has to turn instead to the discourse of revo-
lutionary socialists to find equally striking allegations against the bourgeoisie, such
as linking capitalist exploitation with cannibalism. While Büchner in Der Hessische
Landbote (1834) had already employed this comparison between socioeconomic
exploitation and cannibalism,80 in the contemporary context it recurs most promi-

80 Büchner likens the exploitation in the semi-feudal agricultural economic system of 1830s Hesse
to cannibalism. For Büchner, the rich “haben die Häute der Bauern an, der Raub der Armen
ist in ihrem Hause [...],” thus also portraying exploitation as a crime amounting to cannibalism
(Büchner 2002 II, 55).
224

nently in the dedication “To the Working-Classes of Great Britain” to Engels’ Die
Lage der arbeitenden Klasse in England (1845):

Having, at the same time, ample opportunity to watch the middle-classes,

your opponents, I soon came to the conclusion that you are right, perfectly
right in expecting no support whatever from them. Their interest is dia-
metrically opposed to yours, though they always will try to maintain the
contrary and to make you believe in their most hearty sympathy with your
fates. Their doings give them the lie. I hope to have collected more than
sufficient evidence of the fact, that – be their words what they please – the
middle-classes intend in reality nothing else but to enrich themselves by
your labour while they can sell its produce, and to abandon you to starva-
tion as soon as they cannot make a profit by this indirect trade in human
flesh. (Marx & Engels 1975a IV, 298)

Like the authors of “Das Blutgericht” Engels exposes how under industrial capi-
talism any ethical imperatives as prescribed by the concept of the moral economy
have been invalidated and that the manufacturers constitute utterly unscrupulous
exploiters of their workers. It depicts a social war enacted by the rich against the
poor. Consequently, the only form of protest that remains for the proletarians is
to rise up against the entrepreneurs and to destroy the property the latter have
extorted from the labour of the poor. As pointed out, Heine does not accuse the
British entrepreneurs of trading in human flesh, but the workers. In article LI of
Lutezia (17 September 1842), he warns that the English workers might soon try
some “Menschenfleisch” and become as skilled in this bloody trade (“blutige Gew-
erbe”) as their French colleagues (cf. Heine 1997 V, 419). More metaphorically,
the same allegation can also be found in reports on the Silesian Weavers’ Revolt
in the liberal press. On 31 July 1844 the Berlin correspondent of the Morgenblatt
für gebildete Leser condemns the despairing weavers for expressing their outrage “in
kannibalischer Gemeinheit” (Anonymous 1844a, 732).
Considering this ideological viewpoint, it is hardly surprising that in “Die ar-
men Weber” such lack of moral responsibility is not indicted regarding the en-
trepreneur, but solely regarding the person of the monarch. Besides God and the
fatherland, he is the principal target of the weavers’ outrage. While through the
genitive attribute “König der Reichen” the rich bourgeoisie is indirectly implicated
in the oppression of the weavers, the main attack is still directed against the type
of monarch who does not care for the welfare of all his subjects, but solely for the
rich among them. Replying to such reproaches that were commonplace after the
rebellion, the Prussian King Wilhelm IV issued an order that blames his officials
 225

for neglecting their “Aufsichts-Sorgfalt für die Unglücklichen und Armen, die ob-
dachlosen Kinder, […] für die Arbeiter, die durch Krankheit in Noth gerathen,” as
Arnold Ruge reports (1844, 4; emphasis in original). Heine’s critique, however,
applies not merely to the Prussian but also to the French King Louis Philippe, ‘le
roi citoyen,’ whose rule depended on the support of the wealthy bourgeoisie. Thus
it would be inaccurate to claim – as Marcuse does – that Heine’s criticism here only
extends to Prussia and its ruler. In principle Heine opposes any such ‘kings of the
rich’ and contrasts them with a monarch figure whose paternalistic responsibilities
extend to the poor. As for instance Wolfgang Koßek and Hans Boldt point out (see
Koßek 1982, 223-224 and Boldt 1990, 75-78), such an idea of “Volkskönigtum”
or “Volkskaisertum” forms a key socio-political notion for Heine. He finds this
ideal of a monarch epitomised by Napoleon, who promoted “die physische und
moralische Wohlfahrt der zahlreichern und ärmern Klassen,” as Heine writes of
the emperor in the “Tagesbericht vom 20. August 1832” in Französische Zustände
(1997 III, 269). Again implicitly referring to Napoleon, in Shakespeares Mädchen
und Frauen (1838) Heine praises those Roman emperors who granted “dem Volke
sein erstes Recht” by giving it “sein tägliches Brot.” He even casts such monarchies,
“wo ein Einziger als Inkarnation des Volkswillens an der Spitze des Staates steht,”
as the best possible form of government since it provides a truly just form of soci-
ety. Paradoxically he maintains that under this socially responsible form of monar-
chy “blüht die sicherste Menschengleichheit, die echteste Demokratie” (1997 IV,
200-201).81 The Prussian King clearly violates any such notion of the monarch’s
social responsibility. He forms the exact antithesis of the ideal of a “Volkskönig,”82
when he exploits the lower classes and then brutally quashes their justified social
protest by military force. His father, Friedrich Wilhelm IV, had betrayed his people
when he promised a constitution if they fought for him, “für Gott, König und Va-
terland” against Napoleon. Now his son similarly betrays his people’s social needs
by employing the same propagandistic slogan.

81 Cf. also Jeffrey L. Sammons’ verdict on Heine’s socio-political views: “Heine seems to have been
attracted a great deal more by Caesar than by the power of the people, so much that his own
political posture has been identified as ‘Cäsarismus.’ […] All the images of power, marble hands
taming anarchy, and the like, suggest that in Napoleon Heine saw an ideal government for the
people much more than of or by the people” (2006, 72; Sammons’ emphasis).
82 Heine is not the only contemporary liberal author who voices such criticism. Even before the
Silesian Weavers’ Revolt, Bettina von Arnim in Dies Buch gehört dem König (1843) accused the
Prussian King of grossly neglecting his social responsibilities towards the lower classes.
226

The Silesian Weaver’s Revolt and Spectres of Class War

As the comparison of “Die schlesischen Weber” to “Das Blutgericht” has illus-

trated, Heine’s poem – unlike the weavers’ song – neither shows how the weaver’s
condition is a direct result of the capitalist social order, nor does it advocate socio-
revolutionary violence against the bourgeoisie. One might even go as far as to
argue that Heine’s weavers constitute little more than a mouthpiece for the poet’s
scathing critique of Prussia as an anachronistic semi-feudal state that is at odds
with the emerging liberal bourgeoisie. This becomes evident when one looks at
the communicative situation of the poem. The “wir” of the weaver is deceptive as
it disguises the ego of the poet’s persona. In adopting the personae of the weavers,
the poet merges with them and creates highly fictionalised weaver figures who – at
least to a considerable degree – function as spokespersons for the bourgeoisie and
its ideology. I would claim that in Heine’s poem, the seemingly proletarian voice
of the weavers is taken over by the hidden bourgeois voice of the poet.83 This
becomes particularly evident by the fact that – in contrast to the speakers in the
“Blutgericht” who attack proletarian exploitation by the capitalists – Heine’s weav-
ers merely attack their abuse at the hands of the king and the fatherland. To put
it bluntly, by robbing his weavers of their original proletarian voice, Heine strives
to substitute the weavers’ socio-revolutionary proletarian ideology with a liberal
ideological position. Thus it is misleading to claim, as Jeffrey L. Sammons does,
that “Die schlesischen Weber” is “ein Rollengedicht der grollenden, drohenden
Weber” in which – unlike in other Heine poems – “die gestische Hervorhebung
der dichterischen Maske” is absent (cf. Sammons 1991, 104). More accurately
would it be to assert that Heine’s persona hides behind the masks of his proletarian

83 Heine’s social status as bourgeois only partly accounts for this fact. As a comparison with Georg
Weerth’s unpublished poem “Das Hungerlied” (written before 1847) suggests, for a bourgeois
poet to adopt a proletarian persona does not necessarily mean playing down a proletarian socio-
revolutionary agenda. More decisive than class is Heine’s liberal revolutionary ideology, as op-
posed to Weerth’s socialist agenda. Similar to Heine’s “Weber” the speakers of Weerth’s “Hun-
gerlied” are a proletarian collective that demand the right to sustenance from the king. Yet, in
contrast to the rather resigned ending of Heine’s poem, the proletarians in Weerth’s poem utter a
defiant socio-revolutionary threat at the end. The collapse of the moral economy leads to socio-
revolutionary anger. Playing with the ‘cannibal-imagery,’ the speakers warn the king that if he
does not provide for them as the moral economy demands of him, they will grab him and eat
him up: “Verehrter Herr und König, / Weißt du die schlimme Geschicht / Am Montag aßen wir
wenig / Und am Dienstag aßen wir nicht. // Und am Mittwoch mußten wir darben, / Und am
Donnerstag litten wir Not; / Und ach, am Freitag starben / Wir fast den Hungertod! // Drum
laß am Samstag backen / Das Brot, fein säuberlich – / Sonst werden wir sonntags packen / Und
fressen, o König, dich!” (Weerth 1956 I, 193)
 227

speakers. Even more inaccurate, however, is Hans Kaufmann’s related claim that
“Die schlesischen Weber” constitute “den einzigsten Fall in Heines Lyrik” in which
“der wahre Gegenspieler” of the bourgeoisie, the proletariat “weder in Gestalt des
Dichters noch in symbolischen Beschreibungen, sondern in objektiver und realer
Gestalt auftritt” (1976, 216-217).
Yet, in spite of such reiterated critical claims to the contrary, the poet’s persona
is not entirely absent but present throughout the poem, even if it is not marked in
a traditional way, for instance by the first personal pronoun ‘I.’ On a formal level,
such presence manifests itself most conspicuously in the intricate rhetorical form
of the poem. Rhythmically, the poet not only mimics the process of weaving but
also highlights the process of composing, of ‘weaving’ the poem. In the poem’s
form the persona of the poet is present as much as in its ideological content. The
play with aggressive sounding phonemes (in particular plosives such as “fletschen”,
“gepreßt” etc.) and the rumbling rhythm, reminiscent of an angry march, endow
the poem with a socio-revolutionary menace that is largely absent in its ideology.
It could be said, therefore, that it is not the threatening and grumbling weavers
who “den dreifachen Fluch gegen Gott, König und Vaterland in das Leichentuch
Altdeutschland hineinweben” as Jeffrey Sammons asserts (1991, 104), but the per-
sona of the poet.
Heine in his poem neither adopts a proletarian ideological position nor does
he promote a radical socio-revolutionary position. In his “Kritische Randglossen,”
in which Marx – as shown – develops the distinction between political and social
revolution, he explicitly casts the Silesian Weavers’ Revolt as the mother of all
future proletarian revolutions. As “eine Protestation des Menschen gegen das ent-
menschte Leben” (MEGA II, 462), it forms a proletarian social revolution en min-
iature. “Der Aufstand war nicht unmittelbar gegen den König von Preußen, er war
gegen die Bourgeoisie gerichtet” (446), Marx maintains in sharp contrast to Heine
in “Die schlesischen Weber.” Wolff adopts a similar socio-revolutionary perspective
on the Revolt when he regards it as the prelude “in dem unaufhaltbaren Proletari-
erdrama, […] im Kriege der Besitzlosen gegen die Tyrannei und Selbstsucht des
Privateigentums.” In this struggle the proletarians engage as “zur Maschine ernied-
rigten Menschen” with the aim of “Wiedergewinnung seiner Würde” (1965, 168).
As I have stressed repeatedly, the weavers’ protest in Heine’s poem is depicted as
not being immediately directed against the bourgeoisie, against the rule of private
property, or as an attempt of the weavers to regain their alienated humanity, but –
228

at least on the literal level – as a struggle against the aristocracy and the neo-feudal
order of “Altdeutschland.”84
Nevertheless, one might with some justification claim that Heine’s poem does
evoke a scenario of a potential proletarian social revolution, even if it does not
endorse it. According to his general ideological viewpoint, also in “Die armen
Weber” Heine does not regard such a transformation as a desirable development,
a lasting solution to the social crisis, but on the contrary as a profound threat to
civil society. The repressed – potentially socio-revolutionary – aggression of the
defeated proletarians, which the poem expresses, is not shown in a positive and
sympathetic light (as critics have repeatedly argued) but in an altogether more
ambiguous manner. When the weavers are depicted in the second line – “Sie sitzen
am Webstuhl und fletschen die Zähne” – then they are portrayed as semi-human,
resembling aggressive and menacing animals. While in “Das Blutgericht” it is the
capitalists who are cast as subhumans, as savage cannibals, in “Die armen Weber”
it is the proletarians. One could even be as cynical as to argue that the king is not
totally mistaken “wenn er [die Weber] wie Hunde erschießen läßt” (l. 14), since
in their initial depiction in the poem they exactly resemble dogs that bare their
teeth. As Gerhard Höhn highlights, moreover the rhythm of poem expresses “die
Auslöschung alles Menschlichen” which further manifests itself in reduction of
the weavers’ ability to express themselves to “zwei einförmige Worte” (2004, 111).
Admittedly, this depiction of the proletariat is not quite as unsympathetic as the
one in article VI of Französische Zustände, in which – as discussed – a savage mob
indiscriminately butchers those that it perceives as class enemies. However, Heine’s
figures are not socio-revolutionary figures as they seem to resign themselves to their
dehumanised status. Heine’s image of the weavers thus differs decisively from the
image of an alienated proletariat that struggles heroically to regain its humanity,
a view of the Silesian Weavers’ Revolt that Marx, Engels, and Wolff sketch out to
promote their concept of proletarian social revolution. While he does not mention
his ideological discrepancies with Heine at all, Engels is nevertheless acutely aware
of them, as another line of his translation of Heine’s “Die armen Weber” shows.
When Engels renders “sie fletschen die Zähne” as “the rage of despair in their face,”
he significantly alters the meaning (Marx & Engels 1975, 232). Instead of sug-
gesting that the weavers are semi-human, he humanises them when he assigns the
human feeling of despair to them rather making them display animal-like gestures.

84 This comparative lack of criticism of the bourgeoisie and the capitalists also differentiates Heine’s
poem from Shelley’s “Song to the Men of England” in which the same motif is used. As pointed
out in chapter I, the proletarians in this poem are weaving their own “winding-sheet – till fair /
England be [their] Sepulchre” (ll. 31-32).
 229

Moreover, a significant transformation in Heine’s negative perception of the prole-

tariat is visible neither in “Die schlesischen Weber” nor in his prose publications of
the 1840s. There is no evidence that Heine’s negative and angst-ridden perspective
on a socio-revolutionary proletariat underwent any drastic change from the mid-
1840s onwards. His acquaintance with Marx in Paris in 1843 did not convince
Heine of Marx’s tenet of proletarian social revolution as the panacea to society’s
ills, as has been occasionally argued. While there is evidence (as discussed in sec-
tion 3.2.2 of this study) that Heine could identify with Marx’s insistence on the
vital role of philosophy for engendering socio-political change – adapting it as
the “Führungsrolle, welche die Philosophen darin übernahmen” (Schieder 1981,
124-125) – he was not prepared to endorse a scenario of a violent social revolution
led by the proletariat: a concept that Marx spelled out with his “Kritische Rand-
glossen” in August 1844. While “Die armen Weber” evokes the possibility of the
destruction of bourgeois society, it provides at the same time, as Walter Grab ar-
gues, “kein positives Zukunftsbild” of what would follow from this act of violence.
“Nicht geleitet von demokratischen Intellektuellen, vermögen die Massen nicht
mehr, als ihre Bitternis hinauszuschreien und düstere Drohungen auszustoßen”
(1992, 153). Siding with Grab, I would maintain that Heine promotes with his
poem a nightmare vision of the revolutionary proletariat rather than a vision of the
proletariat as the saviour of society, as Wehner asserts.85
Arguably, such an image of the proletariat as a ferocious revolutionary force
that will overrun bourgeois society with an anarchic order emerges most clearly in
the opening passage of article IV of Lutezia (30 April 1840). In it Heine alleges
that, besides its natural savagery, the proletariat is being indoctrinated by socialist
propaganda, which further incites their fierce nature towards destroying the bour-
geoisie. As Heine observes with great concern, “Baboeufs Lehre und Verschwörung
von Buonarroti, Schriften, die wie nach Blut rochen” are being distributed among
“den Ouvriers, dem kräftigsten Teil der untern Klasse” in the factories in the fau-
bourgs of Paris. It is in these places, Heine prophesies, that the proletariat forges in
the rhythm of its work the downfall of contemporary society:

85 In my opinion, Grab’s reading of the poem summarises the anti-proletarian ideology of “Die
schlesischen Weber” much more accurately than Wehner’s assertion that Heine, with his fic-
tional representation of the Silesian Weavers’ Revolt, is the first – as well as perhaps the only –
poet who manages to create a vision “einer sozialrevolutionären Perspektive, zur Konfrontation
von Proletariat und Bourgeoisie”: Heine “denkt die Weber als ein revolutionäres Proletariat, das
den Untergang der alten Gesellschaftsordnung bewirken wird,” as becoming “die bestimmende
Macht der zukünftigen Gesellschaft” (1980, 63; Wehner’s emphasis).
230
[...] Lieder hörte ich singen, die in der Hölle gedichtet zu sein schienen,
und deren Refrains von der wildesten Aufregung zeugten. Nein, von den
dämonischen Tönen, die in jenen Liedern walten, kann man sich in unsrer
zarten Sphäre gar keinen Begriff machen; man muß dergleichen mit eigenen
Ohren angehört haben, z. B. in jenen ungeheuern Werkstätten, wo Me-
talle verarbeitet werden, und die halbnackten trotzigen Gestalten während
des Singens mit dem großen eisernen Hammer den Takt schlagen auf dem
dröhnenden Amboß. Solches Akkompagnement ist vom größten Effekt, so-
wie auch die Beleuchtung, wenn die zornigen Funken aus der Esse hervor-
sprühen. Nichts als Leidenschaft und Flamme! (Heine 1997 V, 251)

Considering the largely negative connotation of these passages, Wehner’s sugges-

tion that Heine – as well as by extension in “Die schlesischen Weber” – positively
comments on the beginnings of proletarian culture, appears rather absurd. Heine
neither identifies “Ansätze einer proletarischen Literatur […] in den demokratisch-
en Volks- und Revolutionsliedern” (cf. 1980, 32), nor does he intend to write such
a proletarian poem with “ Die Schlesischen Weber.” On the contrary, both this
passage and the poem forcefully suggest that proletarian existence only becomes
‘culture’ in its poetic representation by a bourgeois author. At the same time it is
this artistic process that enables the narrator to contain the open threat that ema-
nates from the proletarian presence. There is no point in denying the menace that
this depiction of Parisian workers evokes. Apart from some potential admiration
of the animalistic strength of the workers, the overall impression of this passage on
the bourgeois readers must have been disconcerting. The “halbnackten trotzigen”
French proletarians in the factories appear to work towards the death of bourgeois
society, while they “mit dem großen eisernen Hammer den Takt schlagen auf dem
dröhnenden Amboß” and are singing savage socio-revolutionary songs “mit dämo-
nischen Tönen.” In the same way, their German counterparts in “Die schlesischen
Weber” are incessantly weaving a prophecy of doom for contemporary bourgeois
society into the product of their labour. While Heine literally presents them as only
weaving the sheet for the anachronistic, still largely semi-feudal German states
(“Altdeutschland”), it is implied that their intensely savage anger also threatens
modern bourgeois society on a whole. Like the French ouvriers, they produce their
prophecy of doom to the rhythm of their work and with the tools of their trade.
Instead of the hammer they use their flying shuttle of their looms. Instead of the
anvil sounding, the loom is creaking. While the ouvriers sing fierce demonic songs,
the weavers voice their growling curses while they “fletschen die Zähne” (l. 2) like
angry dogs:
 231
Das Schiffchen fliegt, der Webstuhl kracht,
Wir weben emsig Tag und Nacht –
Altdeutschland, wir weben dein Leichentuch,
Wir weben hinein den dreifachen Fluch,
Wir weben, wir weben! (ll. 21-25; Heine 1997 IV, 455)

It is definitely true that although their rebellion has failed, Heine’s weavers are – in
contrast to most contemporary depictions – not portrayed as “resignierende und
ausgehungerte Elendsgestalten,” as Wehner remarks (1980, 63). However, that
does not necessarily mean, as he thinks, that “Die schlesischen Weber” (or even
“Die armen Weber”) propagate proletarian social revolution. By contrast, I would
argue that the poem warns of the continued threat that proletarian discontent
and anger pose to bourgeois society. The fact that the poem’s proletarians appear
so powerful, in spite of starvation and momentary impotence, serves to make this
admonition all the more resounding.
Assigning a powerfully defiant stance to the weavers does not necessarily entail
an endorsement of proletarian revolution. This becomes evident in a brief con-
textualisation with an article in Cotta’s liberal Morgenblatt für gebildete Leser (2-3
September 1844). Its author is gravely concerned by the weavers’ resilience and
strength despite their miserable living conditions. If the weavers – who before their
uprising had been portrayed as dispirited and resigned starvelings – had already
posed such a strong threat to a bourgeois society, one might wonder what will
happen if the physically stronger proletarians (i.e. the workers) rise up. With the
Silesian Weaver’s Revolt

[…] brach in den zwei großen oberschlesischen Fabrikdörfern der längst

viel besprochene und befürchtete Krieg der Armen gegen die Reichen that-
sächlich aus, und zwar in einer Weise wie es gerade auf dieser Seite kaum
für möglich gehalten wörden. Die Gerüchte davon widersprachen so sehr
allen gewöhnlichen Vorstellungen von der Kraft und Energie der gedrück-
ten, fleißigen Bevölkerung unseres Gebirges, die Weber waren stets nur als
so völlig entkräftete, flachköpfige Dulder der schlechten Zeit geschildert
worden […] Wenn diese Weber, diese repräsentativen Gestalten des Hun-
gers, mit dem gekrümmten Rücken, mit den hohlen, matten Augen und
den kraftlosen, abgezehrten Gliedern, mit dem sklaven-demüthigen Sinne,
als wüthendende Rachegespenster das Beispiel zum Aufstande gegen die
gesellschaftlichen Zustände gegeben haben, was läßt sich dann von dem
noch kräftigern Proletarier erwarten! Wahrlich, wir wandeln auf einem aus-
gehöhlten vulkanischen Boden der Zeit! (Anonymous 1844b, 844, 848;
emphasis in original)
232

As shown, Heine also warns strongly of the threat of a potential proletarian social
revolution, of a war of the poor against the rich. He repeatedly portrays these
stronger, socio-revolutionary proletarians, perhaps most menacingly in the depic-
tion of the Parisian smiths in the above passage. Modern reincarnations of the Ro-
man God Vulcan, the protector of the smiths, they seem to forge the death knell
for bourgeois society in their hellish forge.
To sum up the results of my investigation of Heine’s attitude towards social
revolution, the widely held critical opinion that he, in his more radical moments,
propagates a concept of proletarian social revolution is false. Even the poem “Die
armen Weber” (or its better-known version “Die schlesischen Weber”), which is
often regarded as the text among Heine’s oeuvre that most explicitly calls for a
proletarian social revolution, warns of – rather than advocates – such a develop-
ment. The only revolution that the poem unequivocally endorses is one against
the reactionary German states, its nobility, and monarchy. Heine does not call
for any revolution against bourgeois society as such. The reason that one tends to
interpret the poem differently lies in its aesthetic form, its intricate erasure of the
persona of the poet in the curses of the weavers and its stirring rhythms. We as
readers can enjoy their continued suffering and their frustrated anger precisely be-
cause it is sanitised through Heine’s artistic technique. The poem transforms raw –
and potentially frightening – emotions such as weaver’s proto-socio-revolutionary
wrath into a poetic product, palatable for bourgeois aesthetic sensibilities. Heine’s
aesthetic mastery keeps the lid on the simmering revolutionary anger. While the
aesthetic form with its rousing rhythm highlights the revolutionary potential of
weavers, it, at the same time, aims to exorcise the demons of a social revolution
that the historic revolt had conjured up. This precarious strategy functions be-
cause Heine not only manipulates the emotion of its readers but also reduces the
response of his weavers to social exploitation and oppression to a largely emotional
gut reaction. In sharp contrast to the weavers in “Das Blutgericht,” Heine’s “Arme
Weber” are denied a developing proletarian social consciousness. Animal-like they
bare their teeth and vent their anger through curses that are not even addressed
towards their genuine exploiters. The narrators of “Das Blutgericht”, by contrast,
start to inquire rationally into the mechanism that enables their masters to enrich
themselves further, while they themselves are being increasingly proletarianised.
 233

3.3 “Der Krieg der Armen gegen die Reichen”: Börne’s Shifting Perspective
on Proletarian Social Revolution

This subchapter investigates the revolutionary ideology of Ludwig Börne, who –

unlike Heine – has become an increasingly marginalised author within German
studies.86 The neglect of Börne is as much due to the lack of any texts in his oeuvre
that would fit into the major literary genres of poetry, drama or novel, as it is to his
politics. I contend that, in contrast to Heine, Börne took an increasingly radical
stance after the July Revolution of 1830 and until his death in 1837 moved ever
closer to proletarian social revolution.87 Whereas – as already shown – Heine has
been unduly credited with being one of the first German authors to embrace social
revolution, Börne has often been portrayed as a staunch, old-fashioned Jacobin
unable to embrace this new revolutionary trend.88 Ironically, Heine astutely recog-
nised Börne’s move towards socialism and, as a consequence, decisively distanced
himself from him (as illustrated in my analysis of Ludwig Börne: eine Denkschrift).
Most critics, however, have ignored or at least considerably played down the ex-
tent and importance of that development. Wolfgang Labuhn argues, for example,
that Börne lacked the understanding for the social question and – similarly to
most other contemporary liberals – “fand für die soziale Frage nur eine politische
Antwort” (1980, 255). Norbert Eke is one of the few who underlines the fact that
after 1830 Börne – unlike Heine – uncompromisingly campaigned for “Veränder-
ung der sozialen Verhältnisse” (2005, 65; my emphasis). One might suspect that
such unwavering socio-political commitment would manifest itself in a distinct
move towards social revolution in Börne’s works that were written after the July
Revolution. However, Hans-Joachim Ruckhäberle, the sole critic who investigates
Börne’s works from this angle, maintains that this is not the case. While stress-
ing that close ties existed between Börne and the Parisian early German workers’

86 As far as I can see, only one book on Börne (a collection of essays) has been published within the
last ten years (Stern & Gierlinger 2003).
87 Helmut Koopmann repeatedly stresses Börne’s radicalisation after his move to Paris, but rather
unhelpfully fails to specify the exact nature of it. This is the only hint he gives that Börne was
interested in social questions (See 1996, 99-102).
88 The socialist literary critic Franz Mehring was one of the first to claim in 1911 that Börne had a
limited political-social outlook. Caught within the confines of “kleinbürgerlich-demokratischen
Anschauungen,” Börne – in contrast to Heine – lacked a deeper understanding of both German
philosophy and French socialism (cf. Mehring 1960 ff. IV, 122). Lukács echoes this verdict (see
1978, 32), as does Peter-Uwe Hohendahl (see 1980, 611).
234

movement (1977, 12-16, 1988, 99-101),89 he claims that Börne’s revolutionary

ideology never went beyond a republican bourgeois, i.e. a political perspective on
revolution. He concludes his essay with the verdict that Börne was precariously
poised between Heine’s liberal ideological position and those of the early socialist
artisans and workers (cf. 1988, 109). The latter were strongly influenced by the
revolutionary ideas of the early French socialists, in particular the group of Neo-
Babouvists around Buonarroti and Blanqui. Although Börne abandoned the belief
in the autonomy of art, which was the central tenet of Heine’s self-understanding
as a political poet, and recognised that the lower classes had to form the basis for
any future revolution, he did not make the transition from the “politischen Schrif-
steller” to the social commentator (cf. 109). Targeting mainly the educated bour-
geois audience “des räsonnierenden Lesepublikums,” he remained firmly commit-
ted to “der literarisch-publizistischen ‘Partei’ der radikalen Republikaner, nicht der
sich entwickelnden frühsozialistischen Richtung der Arbeiterbewegung” (108).90
However, a reading of Börne’s post-1830 works that places them in close inter-
relationship to the developing early German proletarian and early French socialist
discourses challenges such a view. Decisively moving towards a notion of prole-
tarian social revolution, Börne’s revolutionary ideology increasingly encompasses
the social and socioeconomic demands voiced by these movements. As my inter-

89 These links are largely ignored even by recent criticism. For instance Peter-Uwe Hohendahl
indiscriminately states that Heine and Börne in Paris just “cultivated their connections with
French literati” (2004, 567). The following observation made by Hans-Joachim Ruckhäberle
more than 30 years ago is still topical: “Die Haltung Heines und die aktive Rolle Börnes im
‘Deutschen Volksverein’ und im ‘Bund der Geächteten’ ist erstaunlicherweise wenig erforscht”
(1977, 15).
90 This verdict is hard to uphold. Börne contributed at least one article, “Rettung” (1835) about
Hugues-Félicité-Robert de Lammenais’ Paroles d’un Croyant (1834), a controversial Christian
socialist text, to Jakob Venedey’s Geächteten. This journal was the organ of the eponymous secret
German exile fraternity, the majority of whom were artisans and workers. According to Nor-
bert Eke, Börne also distributed his translation of Lammenais among the German workers in
Paris as a free pamphlet (2005, 69). There is evidence to suggest that Börne had a considerable
readership among German artisans and workers in Paris. Briefe eines Schweizers aus Paris (1835-
1836), written by the Swiss artisan Wolfgang Strähl, not only pays homage to Börne’s Briefe aus
Paris, but also displays a thorough knowledge of Börne’s work. While Strähl opposes Heine’s
elitist tendencies, he praises Briefe aus Paris “des rühmlichen Herrn Börnes […] der auch über
politische und wissenschaftliche Dinge ein gar artiges Urteil hat” (1988, 163; Strähl’s emphasis).
The library holdings from 1840 of the London-based proletarian “Communistischen Arbeiter-
Bildungs-Verein” list Börne’s last book Menzel, der Franzosenfresser (1837) under entry number
198, but not a single one of Heine’s works (see Grandjonc, König & Roy-Jacquemart 1979, 39).
This amounts to convincing evidence that Börne enjoyed a considerable popularity among the
contemporary working classes.
 235

textual analysis will suggest, it seems as though at times he even influenced the
German proletarian perspective on revolution, a crucial aspect that nearly all the
existing criticism on Börne ignores.91 Over the course of his Briefe aus Paris (1832-
1834) his ever more acute analysis of the contemporary socio-political conditions
in France provides the basis for a debate on the shape and nature of future revo-
lutions. Growing increasingly radical and uncompromising in ideological terms,
his letters challenge fundamentally the validity of a primarily political bourgeois
revolution.
In the “Vierzehnter Brief ” (dated “17. November [1830]” and published
1832), Börne first voices his profound disillusionment with the liberal July Revo-
lution. It has achieved so little, “daß man die letzte Revolution als ganz fruchtlos
ansehen kann” (1964 III, 66), he concludes before launching into an impassioned
attack on the rich liberal bourgeoisie. Soon afterwards, in the “Einundzwanzigsten
Brief,” Börne echoes this sentiment and reaches an even more devastating verdict
on the July Revolution. He acknowledges that any hopes that the revolution would
bring more socio-political freedom were utterly illusory. In exasperation, he meta-
phorically terms its aftermath – in allusion to the trope of revolution as a political
springtime – “der erbärmlichste Revolutionsfrühling, der mir je vorgekommen”
and bitterly remarks that his “Träume von Frankreichs Freiheit sind auch dahin”
(1964 III, 100). Far earlier than Heine, Börne recognises the sociological fact that
the rich bourgeoisie has become “eine Geldaristokratie.”92 This class has replaced
the aristocracy as the ruling class that oppresses and exploits the lower classes (thus

91 As far as I can see, Inge Rippmann is the only critic to posit a potential influence of Börne on the
German exile workers’ movement. According to her, the disappointment with the July Revolu-
tion did not only trigger a decisive ideological shift in Börne, “vom Liberalen zum radikalen
Aktivisten,” but also led him to embrace a different social class as the target of his revolution-
ary interventions. No longer content “den deutschen Mittelstand mit seinen Pariser Briefen
aufzurütteln,” he embarked on the “Schulung der von ihm als geschichtsbildend erkannten
Unterschicht der Handwerker und Arbeiter” (cf. 1981, 107).
92 Heine uses the same term first in Artikel LVII (5 May 1843) of Lutezia, more than ten years
after Börne. Discussing the increasing takeover of politics by the business and financial elite,
Heine writes: “[…] es ist das Staatsruder, dessen sich die herrschende Geldaristokratie täglich
mehr und mehr bemächtigt. Jene Leute werden bald nicht sowohl das comité de surveillance
der Eisenbahnnsozietät, sondern auch das comité de surveillance unserer gesamten bürgerlichen
Gesellschaft bilden” (1997 V, 450). Heine’s comparably late use of this term refutes Wolfgang
Koßek’s claim that Heine was the first to recognise this sociological development. Heine was not
only thinking “sozial sehr genau” but also “weit moderner als alle seine Zeitgenossen”, Koßek
wrongly maintains (cf. 1982, 227). In contrast to most literary critics, the historian Helmut
Bock is right when he emphasises that “Börne war unter den Literaten seines Landes der erste,
der das politisch-soziale Wesen der ‘Bürgerkönigtums’ bloßstellte“ (2008, 13).
236

voicing a similar critique as Shelley did in the British context of 1819). The major-
ity in parliament is held by

[...] die Gutsbesitzer, die reichen Bankiers, die Krämer, die sich mit einem
vornehmen Worte die Industriellen nennen. Diese Menschen, die funfzehn
[sic] Jahre lang gegen alle Aristokratie gekämpft – kaum haben sie gesiegt,
noch haben sie ihren Schweiß nicht abgetrocknet und schon wollen für sich
selbst eine neue Aristokratie bilden: eine Geldaristokratie, einen Glücksrit-
terstand. (Börne 1964 III, 67; Börne’s emphasis)

In contrast to the old aristocracy, the power of this new aristocracy is based en-
tirely on its capital and capitalist ventures, as the terms “Geldaristokratie” and
“Glücksritterstand” connote. Similar to Büchner who dismisses the bourgeoisie as
a revolutionary class and instead embraces the proletariat, Börne begins to place
his hopes in the poor.93 According to him, the latter constitute the only class that
possesses revolutionary spirit. As he insists, the bourgeoisie no longer harbours any
revolutionary potential but only the so-called

Pöbel [...], das heißt die armen Leute, das heißt die einzigen, welchen das
verfluchte Geld nicht die ganze Seele, allen Glauben abgehandelt; die ein-
zigen, denen der Müßiggang nicht alle Nerven ausgesogen, und die einen
Geist haben, die Freiheit zu wünschen, und einen Leib, für sie zu kämpfen
[…] . (Börne 1964, III, 114-115)

Such clear commitment to the proletariat as the only remaining revolutionary class
refutes Rutger Booß’ verdict that Börne assigned a very minor role to the “‘Pöbel’
bei künftigen revolutionären Umwälzungen” (1977, 249).
Yet, in spite of his evident turn towards the lower classes, Börne – at least ini-
tially – still remained beset with bourgeois anxities about the revolutionary prole-
tariat. While he is conscious that the concept of political revolution seems no long-
er a viable ideology and increasingly treats a mere political revolution as inadequate
to bring about social equality, he, at the same time, is fearful of the consequences of
a proletarian revolution. For the poor, so he argues, the struggle for equality must
necessarily attack the possessions of the ascendant industrial bourgeoisie. This will
create a new type of revolution, “eine Art neuer Revolution” (Börne 1964 III, 113):

93 For a comparative discussion of Börne’s and Büchner’s treatment of the ‘Pöbel’ and its revolu-
tionary role, see my forthcoming essay (Hörmann 2011b).
 237
Werden aber Vorrechte an den Besitz gebunden, wird das französische Volk,
dessen höchste Leidenschaft die Gleichheit ist, früher oder später das zu
erschüttern suchen, worauf die neue Aristokratie gegründet worden – den
Besitz, und dies wird zur Güterverteilung, zur Plünderung und zu Greueln
führen,94 gegen welche die der frühern Revolution nur Scherz und Spiel
werden gewesen sein. (Börne 1964 III, 67; Börne’s emphasis)

This acknowledgement that behind such an uprising lies the desire for social equal-
ity elevates the fearfully anticipated future popular revolution from the status of
an anarchic spontaneous uprising of a mob to a deliberate proletarian social revo-
lution. While Börne does not yet view the proletariat as being under direct at-
tack from the moneyed bourgeoisie, as the early socialist revolutionary Blanqui
does,95 it also begins to dawn upon him that without a redistribution of property, a
“Güterverteilung,” the people will never be able to emancipate themselves from the
rule of the new aristocracy whose very power base is their now-entrenched capital-
ist privileges. While acknowledging the necessity of heightened social equality, he
at the same times fears the civil war that might be necessary to achieve this goal and
the social upheavals that achieving it might imply.
To sum up, Börne’s “Vierzehnter Brief ” demonstrates the ideological tensions
that he was experiencing at this time. He maintains the primacy of a political
revolution, while at the same time astutely recognising the link between capital
and political power. In this way he implicitly envisages a scenario of social revo-
lution. Rhetorically and ideologically, however, he still aims to contain it within
the concept of a political revolution: a revolution against privileges (“Vorrechte”)
rather than their property (“Besitz”), even though these are obviously linked in his
discourse. This follows Blanqui’s conception of property as the major stumbling
block towards equality in the new political dispensation insofar as it guarantees
the privileges of the ruling bourgeoisie. Blanqui satirises the bourgeois perspective
using terms similar to Börne’s. In contrast to Börne, however, he exposes these
fears as a projection of the rich whom he considers to be the real plunderers and
robbers:
94 Despite sharing some of Shelley’s apprehension concerning the spectre of anarchy attendant on
any proletarian uprising, Börne demonstrates less ambivalence in realising the absolute inevita-
bility of such an occurrence. Furthermore, in contrast to Shelley, he accepts that any successful
revolution will have to employ violent means.
95 As far as I can tell, Blanqui was one of the first to use the exact term moneyed aristocracy,
“aristocratie d’argent” (1971, 75) in 1832. In his famous defence speech delivered before the
‘Court des Assizes’ of the Département Seine on 15 January 1832, he alleges – in the words of
a contemporary German translation – that the propertyless proletarians find themselves “durch
eine platte Geldaristokratie in die Kaste der Parias verwiesen” (1987, 96).
238
Unaufhörlich klagt man uns Proletairs als Raubgesindel an, das bereit sey,
sich über die Besitzthümer herzumachen [...]. Die Privilegirten hingegen,
die sich vom Schweiße der Armuth mästen, diese sind legitime Besitzer,
denen ein gieriger Pöbel [une avide populace] mit Raub und Plünderung
droht. (Blanqui 2000, 199)

Blanqui implies here that the rich have created a socio-economic order that is
anarchic as it is build on the reckless exploitation, on pillage and robbery, of the
so-called rabble. Thus not the poor, to whom the rich pejoratively refer to as the
rabble, are the real threat to a humane and socially just society, but rather the rich
who turn out to be the genuine ‘rabble.’ Like Blanqui Börne in the “Vierund-
dreißigsten Brief ” also inverts the hypocritical bourgeois notion of the moral and
intellectual superiority of the ruling class over the ‘rabble’ as the following chiastic
statement illustrates: “Ich finde wahre menschliche Bildung nur im Pöbel, und den
wahren Pöbel nur in den Gebildeten” (1964 III, 181). Nevertheless, Börne is still
anxious about a revolutionary scenario that will see the denigrated ‘rabble’ rise up
and take over power.
It is crucial to mention, however, that it was not only the bourgeois Börne
who experienced such ideological tensions as the gradual shift from political to
social revolution was taking place, but these can also be found among the German-
speaking artisans and workers in Paris. Three years later, in a very similar vein to
Börne, the Swiss piano maker Wolfgang Strähl in his Briefe eines Schweizers aus
Paris (1835-1836) also highlights the negative consequences for social equality
that arise from the seemingly indissoluble link between capital, political power,
and the lack of general freedom. In deliberating this conundrum of how to break
this link, he, like Börne, moves towards a proletarian social revolution, but also
stops short of outrightly calling for it. It still remains an unutterable scenario,
forming the implied answer to the question that concludes this passage:

In einem Staate, der kein Verdienst anerkennt, oder wenigstens so hoch-

schätzt, als das Verdienst, Geld zu besitzen – was hat da der arbeitende Teil,
der doch überall der größte ist, für eine Freiheit? Der Reiche besitzt Ämter,
Ehrenstellen, er hat Vermögen und häuft jeden Tag größere Schätze, lebt in
Saus und Braus und alle Mittel stehen ihm zu Gebote, seine Gelüste zu be-
friedigen; allein der Arme (so nenne ich den Bürger, den Handwerker, und
den Landmann) sieht sich von jedem Lebensgenusse ausgeschlossen, und
sein Vermögen schmälert sich notwendig immer mehr und mehr, so wie des
Reichen immer mehr und mehr zunimmt, und was bleibt ihm noch? (Strähl
1988, 289; emphasis in original)
 239

The main stumbling block that prevents both Strähl here and Börne in the “Vier-
zehnter Brief ” of his Briefe aus Paris from endorsing proletarian social revolution
is that they still largely regard socioeconomic exploitation as a result of socio-
political oppression. The bourgeoisie primarily aims to safeguard its socio-political
privileges. To this end it uses its hegemonic position to exploit the proletariat and
thus keep it in socio-political despondency. Börne, however, shifts to a perspective
in which the desire for socioeconomic domination becomes an end in itself. To
acquire property and capital at the expense of others is viewed as the underlying
motivation for all political action. The bourgeoisie conquers not by military force,
but by economic might.
This notion is pointedly expressed in the “Fünfundzwanzigster Brief,” in which
Börne further elaborates the relationship between the bourgeoisie and the prole-
tariat in France. After having used the proletariat to gain victory against the aris-
tocracy in the July Revolution, the bourgeoisie now cracks down on the former.
The rationale behind this is not merely to stabilise its political rule, but primarily
to increase its profits by causing the stocks to rise. Analysing the relation between
the July Revolution and the July Monarchy, Börne angrily unmasks the capitalist
betrayal of the proletarian-led revolution.96 This comes after having watched scenes
depicting the events on open air panoramic paintings: “die Schlachttage im Juli,”
“die Barrikaden, das Pflastergeschoß, die schwarzen Fahnen und die dreifarbigen,
die königlichen Soldaten, [...] die Leichen auf der Straße” (1964 III, 122):

[...] es ist zum Totweinen! Denn ich habe die Kämpfenden gemustert, ich
habe die Leichen betrachtet und gezählt und die Verwundeten – es waren
viele junge Leute; die meisten Alten aber gehörten zum sogenannten, so
gescholtenen Pöbel, der jung bleibt bis zum Grabe. Einen bejahrten Mann
in einem guten Rocke, ich sah keinen, weder unter den Streitenden noch
unter den Gefallenen. Die Männer in guten Röcken sitzen in der Pairs-
und Deputiertenkammer und halten sich die Nase zu vor den stinkenden
Pöbelleichen und sagen: Wir haben Frankreich gerettet, es gehört uns wie
eine gefundene Sache, wie eine Entdeckung, und sie ließen sich ein Patent
darüber geben. Und die reichen Leute, die verfluchten Bankiers kamen und
sagten: halb part! und haltet uns nur den Pöbel im Zaum, damit die Renten

96 The notion of the stolen revolution ‘la révolution escamotée’ – that Börne voices here was com-
mon among left-wing contemporary observers. Sharif Gemie sharply dismisses this view, which
is also common among modern left-leaning historians (1999, 27). Nevertheless he has to con-
cede that this notion makes some sense, “in the days after July 1830,” when the bourgeoisie
reaped the fruits of a revolutionary victory largely achieved by the proletariat (cf. 32).
240
steigen. An diese muß die Rache auch noch kommen. (Börne 1964, III,
122-123; Börne’s emphasis)

While Börne’s self-fashioning as an eyewitness of the July Revolution is purely

fictional,97 his verdict on the social composition of the revolutionaries – that most
of them belonged to the proletariat – is historically accurate.98 Moreover, Börne,
as he highlights how the proletarians formed the main force of the July Revolution
and sharply indicts the bourgeoisie of their subsequent betrayal, moves very close
to a Neo-Babouvist position. In a famous defence speech that he delivered at his
trial before the ‘Court des Assizes’ of the Département Seine on 12 January 1832,
Blanqui highlights in a very similar manner the selfless heroism of the proletarian
barricade fighters and their selfish betrayal at the hands of the bourgeoisie. With
rifles and cobblestones they defeated the well-equipped regular army and swept the
bourgeoisie to power (cf. Blanqui 1971, 84), only to be paid back with cynical con-
tempt and heightened socioeconomic oppression once the bourgeoisie had secured
their political hegemony. As evidence Blanqui alludes to Saint-Marc Girardin’s
verdict on the proletariat from his article in the Journal des Débats (8 December
1831) which (as already pointed out) cast the workers as the blight or even plague
(“la plaie”) of industrial society (cf. Girardin 1831, 1).

[…] qui l´eût dit que tant de joie et de gloire se changerait en un tel deuil !
Qui eût pensé en voyant ces ouvriers grands de six pieds, dont les bourgeois,
sortis tremblant de leurs caves, baisaient à l’envi les haillons, et redisaient le
désintéressement et le courage avec des sanglots d’admiration, qui eût pensé
qu’ils mourraient de misère sur ce pavé, leur conquête, et que leurs admi-

97 Börne was in fact in Germany, in Bad Ems on a health cure during the Revolution and did not
arrive in Paris until 16 September 1830 (See Enzensberger 1997, 370). The play with fiction and
reality forms a characteristic feature of Börne’s Briefe aus Paris. For instance Rütger Booß investi-
gates how fictionalised Börne’s letters are, how they were edited and changed before publication
(see 1977, 168-181).
98 As for instance Dieter Langewiesche stresses, the bourgeoisie was barely involved in the street
fighting. In these battles “überwogen Handwerker und gelernte Arbeiter, auf die fast 1000 der
etwa 1500 Verwundeten und Toten der Julikämpfe von 1830 entfielen” (1987, 49). In contrast
to Börne’s sociologically accurate accounts Eugène Delacroix’s iconic painting of the July Revo-
lution, “La Liberté guidant le peuple” (1830) (image III, p. 199) influentially conjured up the
myth that all social classes and groups were united and equally represented in their fight for
freedom behind the barricades: the bourgeois with the top hat, the student of the école poly-
technique and the ferocious proletarian.
 241
rateurs les appelleraient la plaie de la société ! (Blanqui 1971, 84; emphasis
in original)99

Most indicative of Börne’s move beyond the concept of a bourgeois political revo-
lution is the financial imagery in the passage above with which he depicts the
appropriation of the July Revolution by the bourgeoisie. While the proletarians
decided its outcome on the barricades, the liberal bourgeoisie claims ownership
of the revolution at the bourse and in the legal superstructure by patenting the
revolution as their invention. Metaphorically the betrayal of the revolution is rep-
resented as a financial or legal transaction, as capitalist profiteering from the pro-
letarian revolution, which is the product of the workers as they had toiled and
sacrificed themselves to ensure its victory. France “gehört uns” the bourgeoisie self-
confidently asserts, as it brokers a deal with the financial magnates to keep the
proletariat in check in order for stocks to soar. Financial transactions and the legal
framework that protects an unfettered economic liberalism have now become the
greatest weapons in the arsenal of the bourgeoisie as it launches an all-out class war
against its former ‘allies.’ In this respect, Börne has a more modern – one might
even claim a more proto-Marxist – perspective on class war than even Blanqui. The
latter, in the corresponding passage from his defence speech, employs a more tradi-
tional republican rhetoric, although he also mentions the bourgeois stockbrokers
as one group among the various aristocratic and bourgeois social parasites that rule
France and form the enemies of the proletariat. However, as the verb “speculieren”
implies, the power of the high bourgeoisie to determine politics is growing:

[...] die Höflinge, Hofdamen, Schranzen und Papierstutzer, die auf der Bör-
se zum Voraus schon die Ehre und Zukunft des Landes verhandeln, die
Maitressen, Lieferanten, Polizeifiguren, Scribler etc., welche auf den Unter-
gang Polens100 speculieren. (Blanqui 1987, 96)

99 “Who would have known that so much joy and glory would be transformed into such grief?
Who would have thought, in seeing these six-feet tall workers [and the bourgeois, who, trem-
bling, stepped out of their cellars and were kissing incessantly their rags, and told time and again
of their unselfishness and courage under sobs of admiration; who would have thought they
would die of misery on the same cobbled streets they had conquered] and that their admirers
would call them the plague of society” (Blanqui 1983, 45; my alterations).
100 Blanqui alludes here to the Polish Revolution (1831), which was brutally squashed by Russia.
Sympathy with the rebellious Poles and after their defeat with those seeking exile was widespread
in liberal and republican circles. In Germany the identification with the Polish revolutionaries
led to a decisive politicisation of the bourgeoisie.
242

In the German early proletarian discourse it is only around three years later that
the rich bourgeoisie is widely identified as the major class enemy of the proletariat.
In the anonymous article “Die Geldmacht” (1835) in the Parisian German journal
Der Geächtete, the rich bourgeoisie that dominates the stock market is not only
regarded as the socio-politically most powerful class, but also as the direct class en-
emy of the proletariat. Similarly, as Börne sees it, they employ their financial clout
as weapons in the class war:

Man denke sich den Börsenkaiser mit seinen Millionen, als Stimmführer
einer Minderzahl von einer Million Menschen in einem freien Staate von
dreißig Millionen; […] ihm ist das Geschick des Staates in die Hand ge-
geben, und er giebt der Mehrzahl entweder Gesetze oder den Bürgerkrieg.
(Venedey et al. 1972 I, 161; emphasis in original)

The direct ideological impact of Blanqui looms large throughout the Briefe aus
Paris and particularly in the later letters. In the “Sechzigster Brief ” (1833), Börne
debates the socioeconomic war between the rich and the poor in terms that are
strongly influenced by Blanqui’s socio-revolutionary ideology. Even Ruckhäberle,
who (as pointed out earlier) is very reluctant to ascribe any early socialist beliefs
to Börne, acknowledges Blanqui’s influence on Börne’s “babouvistisch inspirierte
Formulierung vom Krieg der Armen gegen die Reichen […] wie dessen Zurück-
führung auf den ‘Besitz’” (1988, 107). Börne here is not merely inspired by Blan-
qui as Ruckhäberle claims, but he engages very deeply with Blanqui’s justification
of a proletarian social revolution, even referring intertexually to Blanqui’s widely
publicised defence speech.
Blanqui reveals that the laws are but a ploy by the rich minority to keep up the
system of political oppression and socioeconomic exploitation of the proletarian
majority:

Les lois sont faites par cent mille électeurs, appliquées par cent mille jurés,
exécutées par cent mille gardes nationaux urbains […]. Que font les trente
millions de prolétaires dans toutes ces évolutions? Ils paient. (Blanqui 1971,
77)101

101 “The laws are made by one-hundred thousands electors, [administered] by one-hundred thou-
sand jurors, enforced by one-hundred thousand urban national guardsmen. […] [What is the
role of the thirty million proletarians in all these evolutions?] They pay” (Blanqui 1983, 41; my
alterations).
 243

Börne echoes this view of the law as a means to legalise a lawless socioeconomic
system:

Die reichen Leute machen allein die Gesetze, sie allein verteilen die Aufla-
gen, davon sie den größten und schwersten Teil den Armen aufbürden. [...]
Dreißig Millionen stiehlt jährlich der Staat aus den Beuteln der Tagelöhner,
und eine Regierung, die dies tut, hat noch das Herz, einen Dieb an den
Pranger zu stellen und einen Räuber am Leben zu bestrafen! Und nach allen
diesen Abscheulichkeiten kommen sie und lästern über die Unglücklichen,
die nichts zu verlieren haben, und fordern die reichen Leute auf, gegen das
wilde Tier, Volk, auf seiner Hut zu sein! (Börne 1964 III, 376 & 377)

Similarly to Shelley before them, both Börne and Blanqui regard the capitalist lib-
eral state as a deeply anarchic system. Underneath the legalistic framework and the
semblance of order – they agree – a civil and class war between the bourgeoisie and
the proletariat is simmering: “la guerre entre les riches et les pauvres” (Blanqui 1971,
72). The rich are the aggressors, but by representing the proletarians as ferocious
beasts that are about to inflict pillage and destruction upon society, the bourgeoisie
ideologically tries to veil this fact. Alluding probably also to Saint-Marc Girardin’s
comparison of the Lyon worker’s revolt to the Saint-Domingue slave revolt, the
beginning of the Haitian Revolution, Blanqui asserts:

Das Gericht hat eurer Einbildung, sozusagen in ferner Perspektive, eine Em-
pörung der Sklaven vorgespiegelt, um euren Haß durch Furcht anzuregen.
“Ihr seht, sagte es, dieß ist der Krieg der Armen gegen die Reichen; Jeder
der etwas besitzt, ist betheiligt diese Eingriffe zurückzuweisen; wir führen
euch eure Feinde vor, zernichtet sie, bevor sie furchtbarer werden.” Ja, mei-
ne Herren! Dieß ist der Krieg zwischen Arm’ und Reich’; so wollten es die
Reichen, denn sie haben den ersten Angriff gethan. – Sie finden es nur übel,
daß die Armen Widerstand leisten; gerne möchten sie vom Volke sagen:
“Diese Bestie ist so wild, daß sie sich vertheidigt wenn man sie angreift”
Die ganze Philippica des Hrn. General-Advokaten beschränkt sich auf den
Gehalt dieser paar Worte. (Blanqui 2000, 199)

As a defendant representing the proletarians, Blanqui turns the tables against the
rich accusers, because “die Rolle des Anklägers ist die einzige, die dem Unterdrück-
ten zukommt” (2000, 198).
Börne, in his “Sechzigster Brief,” replicates exactly Blanqui’s argumentative at-
tack on the bourgeoisie. Like Blanqui, Börne quotes the bourgeois propaganda
244

against proletarians (in this case against the rebellious silk weavers of Lyon)102 only
eventually to turn those accusations against their originators. Claiming to quote
the former French Premier, minister of the interior and banking magnate Casimir
Périer, Börne angrily comments:

Dieser Kasimir Périer hat darüber gefrohlockt, daß in den blutigen Ge-
schichten von Lyon gar nichts von Politik zum Vorschein gekommen, und
daß es nichts als Mord, Raub und Brand gewesen! Es sei nichts weiter als
ein Krieg der Armen gegen die Reichen, derjenigen, die nichts zu verlieren
hätten, gegen diejenigen, die etwas besitzen! Und diese fürchterliche Wahr-
heit, die, weil sie eine ist, man in den tiefsten Brunnen versenken müßte,
hielt der wahnsinnige Mensch hoch empor und zeigte sie aller Welt! Die
dunkeln Triebe des Volks hat er ihm klar gemacht; seiner wilden Laune des
Augenblicks hat er durch Grundsätze Dauer gegeben; seinen kurzsichtigen
Sorgen des Tages den Blick in ewige Not eröffnet. (Börne 1964 III, 371)

Périer, exactly like the court at Blanqui’s trial, voices a paradigmatic liberal bour-
geois perspective when he speaks of a barbaric war by the poor against the rich.
Like Blanqui, Börne satirises this view when he exposes how Périer, in his patronis-
ing verdict on the Lyon uprising, inadvertently highlights the pivotally novel di-
mension that is intrinsic to this workers’ rebellion. Börne sharply dismisses Périer’s
assessment of the Lyon events – that they constitute nothing more than criminal
acts on a massive scale, “nichts als Mord, Raub und Mord” – as cheap bourgeois
propaganda against the proletariat. Ironically, however, the politician’s spiteful ti-
rade against the rebellious weavers unwittingly also admits that the pendulum has
swung from political to social revolution. When Périer triumphantly and euphe-
mistically declares, “daß in den blutigen Geschichten von Lyon gar nichts von Poli-
tik zum Vorschein gekommen,” he intends to highlight that these events are just
an anarchic bloody riot of a politically unconscious rabble, i.e. not a fundamental
threat to the bourgeois liberal state. By contrast, Börne takes it to mean that the
Lyon Weavers’ Revolt transcended politics, insofar as it had a distinctly socioeco-
nomic character, a grave truth since this new type of revolt threatens the pillars of
bourgeois society. Rather than having been another attempt to stage a political
revolution, a repetition of the July Revolution, it marks the first major instance
of proletarian social revolution. Ironically, Périer made the proletariat aware that
102 The canuts, as the Lyon silk weavers were called, rose on 20 November 1831 and protested
against their working conditions. They managed to take control of the city before they were
routed after three days by an army sent in from Paris. In April 1834 they rebelled again. For
studies investigating these first mass scale workers’ rebellions in European history, see for in-
stance Bezucha 1974, Rude 1977, and Gemie 1999, 44-62.
 245

instinctively, with its “dunklen Triebe,” it has already been semiconscious of the
fact that the primary goal of their struggle is not political but social emancipation.
In assigning to the Lyon weavers a socio-revolutionary motivation, Börne is
in line with the early German proletarian discourse. Theodor Schuster (as previ-
ously pointed out) in the pamphlet Gedanken eines Republikaners (1835) identifies
the workers’ revolts of Lyon in 1831 and 1834, together with the ‘Bristol Riots’
(1831) and the slave revolution in Haiti (1791-1804) as the first manifestations of
this novel proletarian type of revolution. In one of the first uses of the term ‘social
revolution’ among the German exile association in Paris, Schuster remarks on the
fundamentally socio-revolutionary character of the Lyon rebellion, speaking of the
“Brandzeichen der socialen Revolution” (cf. Schuster 1977, 192). Only with a
“radikal sociale und politische Emanzipation der arbeitenden Klassen” will this class
war end (1977, 185).
The Revolt of Lyon posed a severe threat not merely to the liberal state, but
to bourgeois society as a whole. Börne acknowledges that the major conflict in
contemporary society is in essence not a political but a socioeconomic confronta-
tion, a class conflict between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. This ideological
shift from the political to the social not only marks a major move from republican
radicalism to socialism, but also displays a decisive departure from the concept of
a political revolution.
One might still argue that Börne’s move towards a concept of a proletarian
social revolution is hampered by his bourgeois fear of proletarian class violence
against the bourgeoisie, of the “Krieg der Armen gegen die Reichen.” One might
also claim that Börne does not transcend Saint-Marc Girardin’s liberal perspective,
that (as pointed out earlier) warns in the Journal des Débats (8 December 1831)
of a “révolution prolétaire” (cf. 1831, 1). Yet, Börne’s proletarians are not the new
barbarians as Girardin sees them. To hold such a view ignores the manner in which
Börne plays with bourgeois depictions of the proletariat as a semi-animal-like en-
tity without consciousness and incapable of rationality – full of “dunkeln Triebe,”
“wilden Laune des Augenblicks,” and “kurzsichtigen Sorgen” – to evoke the spectre
of anarchy and indicate their revolutionary potential. By contrast for Börne, any
bloodthirsty drive that the proletariat manifests does not indicate its brutish nature
but rather points to a growing awareness of its victimisation.103 Through his satire

103 In his assessment of the Lyon weavers’ rising in “Kritische Randglossen zum Artikel eines
Preußen” (1844), Marx similarly asserts that any socio-revolutionary motivation of the work-
ers was still utterly unconscious. Ironically, their political understanding obscured their social
instinct, which was still waiting to mature into a social understanding, Marx claims: “Die Ar-
beiter zu Lyon glaubten nur politische Zwecke zu verfolgen, nur Soldaten der Republik zu
246

he hopes to promote an awareness of what prevents these victims them from car-
ing about anything other than the immediate future. This includes an awareness
of the wish for a better life that their dark drives express, the “Grundsätze” that lie
behind this momentous manifestation of proletarian rebellion, and an insight into
the causes of the “ewige Not” from which the proletarians suffer.
While Börne here is still apprehensive about the amount of violence and social
upheaval that a proletarian social revolution is likely to involve, he implies that the
opportunity for social reform seems past. Instead of fighting poverty, the bourgeois
politicians across Europe are busy fighting the poor. Hence the war of the poor
against the rich turns out to defensive war, a reaction against the relentless war of
the rich against the poor which is metaphorically likened to a military campaign:

Um den reichen Leuten sagen zu können: Seht, ihr seid bedroht, ihr müßt
es um eurer Sicherheit mit mir halten – um diese elenden Krämervorteile
eines Tages opfert Kasimir Périer das Glück Frankreichs, Europas, vielleicht
um ein Jahrhundert auf. Es ist wahr, der Krieg der Armen gegen die Rei-
chen hat begonnen, und wehe jenen Staatsmännern, die zu dumm oder zu
schlecht sind, zu begreifen, daß man nicht gegen die Armen, sondern gegen
die Armut zu Felde ziehen müsse. (Börne 1964 III, 371; Börne’s emphasis)

Adopting the same strategy of subverting bourgeois stereotypes and discriminatory

assertions about the proletariat as Blanqui does, Börne, in this letter, subsequently
continues to invert the bourgeois formula of the war by the poor against the rich.
Like Blanqui, he reveals that in reality bourgeois society stages a permanent war
by the rich against the poor. Poignantly, Börne unmasks how the capitalist system
incessantly inflicts violence on the poor:

Das Herz empört sich, wenn man sieht, mit welcher Ungerechtigkeit alle
Staatslasten verteilt sind. Hat man denn je einen reichen Städter über zu
starke Auflagen klagen hören? Wer trägt denn nun alle die Lasten, unter
welchen die europäischen Völker halb zerquetscht jammern? Der arme Tag-
löhner, das Land. [...] Der Bauer muß seinen einzigen Sohn hergeben, den
frechen Überfluß der Reichen gegen seine eigene Not zu schützen, und un-
terliegt er der Verzweiflung und murrt, schickt man ihm den eigenen Sohn
zurück, der für fünf Kreuzer täglich bereit sein muß, ein Vatermörder zu
sein, während sie in Wahrheit Soldaten des Socialismus waren. So verdunkelte ihr politischer
Verstand ihnen die Wurzel der geselligen Noth, so verfälschte er ihre Einsicht in ihren wirkli-
chen Zweck, so belog ihr politischer Verstand ihren socialen Instinkt” (MEGA II, 461; Marx’s
emphasis). Similar to Börne, who speaks of “dunklen Triebe,” Marx posits here the existence of
a social instinct among the proletariat.
 247
werden. […] Der reiche Fabrikant hält sich für zugrunde gerichtet, wenn
nicht jede seiner Töchter einen türkischen Schal tragen kann, und um sich
und seiner Familie nichts zu entziehen, wirft er seinen Verlust auf die Arbei-
ter und setzt ihren Tagelohn herab. Die Stadt Paris braucht täglich vierzig
Millionen, von welchen ein schöner Teil in den räuberischen Händen der
begünstigten Lieferanten und Unternehmer zurückbleibt. (Börne 1964 III,
376 & 377)

In this passage Börne’s social radicalism reaches a new level when he accuses the
rich of waging a permanent war against the poor, of perpetual pillage and cal-
lous murder. Recalling his earlier accusations against Périer, Börne provocatively
implies that when Périer conjures up the spectre of proletarian revolution in the
face of the Lyon revolution with allegations of “Mord” und “Raub,” then the same
accusations could with more justification be levelled against the bourgeois state
apparatus and the capitalist socioeconomic system. As he alleges with the term
“räuberischen Händen,” the rich capitalists steal the remaining possessions of the
poor. Against the protesting peasant, the state sends the peasant’s own son as a
soldier who, for a pittance, is forced to become a patricide.
This passage from the “Sechzigster Brief,” in its social radicalism, is again based
on Blanqui’s speech. As pointed out earlier, Blanqui asserts that the bourgeois soci-
oeconomic system has created the war between the poor and the rich since the rich
have directly attacked them by relentlessly exploiting them. In this letter, Börne
has come to share Blanqui’s perspective on class war, as the similarity of their exam-
ples of socioeconomic oppression and exploitation suggests. Like Börne, Blanqui
reminds his audience of the stark social inequality in France. Similar to Börne, he
maintains that “alles Geld wird ja in den Städten verzehrt” to enrich “die privile-
girte Bürgerklasse” in Paris and other cities, whereas “dem Bauer soll übrigens kein
Heller ohnehin von den anderthalb Millarden, deren Fünfsechstheile durch ihn
bezahlt wird, zurückkehren” (Blanqui 1987, 96). Furthermore he alleges – using
several of the same keywords that Börne employs – that taxes, sinecures, tithes,
tolls etc., become a chain which “den Proletair umschlingt, alle seine Glieder fesselt
und auszehrt”:

Die Bemerkung mag hinreichen, daß diese Masse von Lasten immer so aus-
geteilt ist, daß der Reiche dabei immer verschont wird, und der Arme aus-
schließlich gedrückt werde, oder vielmehr daß die Müßigen die arbeitenden
Massen auf eine schändliche Weise berauben. (Blanqui 1987, 96; emphasis in
original)
248

Echoing this passage, Börne also depicts the taxes levied upon the lower classes as
robbery by the ruling classes: “Dreißig Millionen stiehlt jährlich der Staat aus den
Beuteln der Tagelöhner” while a rich person, “die jährlich vierzigtausend Franken
Einkommen hat, zahlt nichts” (cf. 1964 III, 377).
Both Blanqui and Börne seem to blame mainly the excessive taxes and levies for
the condition of the working classes and the exploitation of the toiling producers
by the idle consumers. Although they make great progress in locating an intrinsic
flaw in the capitalist mode of production, they still seem to subscribe largely to the
traditional radical explanation for the exploitation of the poor: financial exploita-
tion of the proletariat by the state apparatus, its socioeconomic machinery, and the
privileged class, as I have pointed out regarding the radical discourse in Britain in
the 1810s.
However, there are instances in both texts that considerably transcend such rad-
ical republican discourse. For instance, when Börne in a satirically pointed manner
mentions the example of the rich manufacturer who lowers the wage of his workers
to compensate for his losses, he blames the capitalist process of production itself,
since the characteristics of the industrial capitalist system permit him to act in
this way in the first place (e.g. labour as the sole capital of the proletariat and the
competition amongst the workers due to a surplus of the unemployed). Within the
capitalist system the proletariat has no other option than to drive the very machine
that exploits it, as Blanqui powerfully suggests when he metaphorically casts the
capitalist system of production as one immense industrial apparatus designed for
exploiting the proletariat up to the point at which it kills the producers:

Schreckliche Maschine, welche von 25 Millionen Bauern und 5 Millionen

Handwerkern einen um den anderen zermalmt, um ihr reinstes Blut abzu-
zapfen und in die Adern der Privilegirten umzugießen. Das mit bewunde-
rungswürdiger Kunst kombinirte Räderwerk, diese Maschine ergreift den
Armen jeden Augenblick, verfolgt ihn in den geringsten Bedürfnissen seiner
anspruchslos bescheidenen Lebensweise, rafft die Hälfte seines geringfü-
gigen Gewinns, seines armseligsten Genusses, hinweg. (Blanqui 2000, 200)

These passages from Blanqui’s and Börne’s texts leave no doubt that on the deepest
level they regard the war waged by the rich against the poor as a socioeconomic war
which both underpins and supersedes the action staged within the political arena.
As long as the liberal capitalist system exists, the proletarians will never be repre-
sented in the political process, as Börne realises. Commenting on two of the most
advanced liberal states in Europe, Britain and France, he writes: “Im Parlament
 249

wie in den Deputiertenkammer sitzen nur die reichen Gutsbesitzer, die Rentiers
und die Fabrikanten, die nur ihren eigenen Vorteil verstehen, welcher dem der
Arbeitsleute gerade entgegensteht” (Börne 1964 III, 375). Börne here reaches a
proto-Marxist position when he regards the socioeconomic and class interests of
the proletariat and bourgeoisie as diametrically opposed to each other.
Based on this insight, Börne dismisses not only political reform as the way to
end class war, but also political revolution.104 The British “Reformbill” of 1832
as well as – by implication – the French July Revolution of 1830 “hat nur den
Zustand der Mittelklassen verbessert und das Helotenverhältnis des niedern Volks
von neuem befestigt” (Börne 1964 III, 375).
Börne’s criticism of the concept of political revolution becomes most obvious
in another passage from the same letter. Starting with the tenet he subscribed to at
the beginning of the Briefe aus Paris that property and privileges are linked, he now
seems to suggest by the end of the passage that a proletarian revolution is the only
solution to achieve social freedom. For Börne, the traditional radical tenet that
political revolution, while establishing a democratic state with universal suffrage,
will prove sufficient to instigate socioeconomic change proved to be an illusion.
In a radical statement that, to a considerable degree, seems to anticipate Marx’s
philosophy of history as a succession of systems of exploitation, Börne identifies
social bondage and class struggle as key characteristics of all socio-political systems
up to the present day. As he maintains, exploitation and social inequality have
marred human history for at least three thousand years. Even the ancient republics
were stricken with this ill, since their socioeconomic system was based on slavery.
Distinguishing political from social freedom, he asserts further that the notion of
political freedom has been used to legitimise socially repressive regimes. Under
the republican systems, the rich were free to oppress and exploit the poor at will,
while the latter have never possessed any degree of social freedom. Such social op-
pression is still continuing in the modern liberal states such as France and England
with their greater degree of political freedom. Börne even concludes that the strong
socioeconomic differences in these countries make it highly probable that these
countries will be the first to experience a tremendous proletarian social revolution:

Nicht gegen den Besitz, nur gegen die Vorrechte der Reichen streitet das
Volk; wenn aber diese Vorrechte sich hinter dem Besitze verschanzen, wie

104 Commenting on this passage, Wolfgang Labuhn unconvincingly argues that it proves that
Börne, like other German liberals, advocated political and social reform as the solution to the
social tensions: “Da die Integration der sozialen Unterschichten in den bürgerlichen Staat an
gewissen organisatorischen Mängeln gescheitert sei, gelte es diese zu beseitigen” (1980, 255).
250
will das Volk die Gleichheit, die ihm gebührt, anders erobern, als indem es
den Besitz erstürmt? Schon die Staaten des Altertums kränkelten an diesem
Übel der Menschheit; dreitausend Jahre haben das Unheil gesät und das
Menschengeschlecht nach uns wird es ernten. Frei nannten sich die Völ-
ker, wenn die Reichen ohne Vorrang untereinander die Gesetze gaben und
vollzogen; die Armen waren niemals frei. Über die kurzsichtigen Politiker,
welche glaubten in den Staaten, wo Adel und Geistlichkeit ihre Vorrechte
verloren, sei der ewige Friede gesichert! Eben diese, wie Frankreich und Eng-
land, stehen der fürchterlichsten Revolution näher, als die andern Staaten,
wo noch keine freieren Verfassungen bestehen. In den letzteren wird dem
niedern Volke noch durch seinen benachbarten Stande, der Bürgerschaft die
Aussicht nach den höhern, bevorrechteten Ständen versteckt. Es vermißt
daher keine Gleichheit. Da aber, wo der Mittelstand sich die Gleichheit
erworben, sieht das untere Volk die Ungleichheit neben sich, es lernt seinen
elenden Zustand kennen, und da muß früher oder später der Krieg der Ar-
men gegen die Reichen ausbrechen. (Börne 1964 III, 371-372)

Treating freedom and equality in a fundamentally social sense, Börne in this socio-
historical analysis comes close to Marx’s outlook on human history in Das Mani-
fest der Kommunistischen Partei: “Die Geschichte aller bisherigen Gesellschaft ist
die Geschichte von Klassenkämpfen” (MEW VI, 462). From this perspective, it
follows that political revolution can never achieve social equality, since the domi-
nant class will also do everything in its power to prevent the oppressed class from
reaching social equality.105 In these countries, such as France or England, where
the bourgeoisie achieved hegemony, its socioeconomic opposition to the prole-
tariat has found its political expression in the liberal state. While previously their
shared opposition against the aristocracy had helped to conceal (“versteckt”) their
social antagonism, the political emancipation of the bourgeoisie has revealed the
underlying class struggle between the poor and the rich. Ever since the bourgeoi-
sie achieved political dominance, the proletariat’s social inequality with all other
classes has become blatantly visible. As Börne further claims, the great social con-
trast to the bourgeoisie will make the proletariat conscious of its socio-material
situation: “es lernt seinen elenden Zustand kennen.” Until the proletariat does not
enjoy the “gleiche Freiheit und gleichen Wohlstand” as the bourgeoisie, the social

105 I fundamentally disagree here with Wolfgang Labuhn who argues that Börne does not under-
stand freedom and equality in a social sense and that Börne merely endorses political liberty:
“Auch der radikale Republikaner Börne versteht unter Gleichheit nur das jedem Einwohner
eines Landes zu gewährende Recht, Vertreter in das Parlament zu senden, ohne dieses Recht
von den Besitzverhältnissen abhängig zu machen. Diese formalrechtliche Gleichheit deckt sich
genau mit dem Gleichheitsbegriff der gemäßigten Liberalen Deutschlands” (1980, 255).
 251

war will continue (cf. Börne 1964 III, 372), a clear endorsement of the notion of
social equality.106
As this passage shows, Börne became convinced that mere political revolution
was not sufficient, since it would not lead to social freedom for the poor, but
rather perpetuate their exploitation. Consequently, for Börne, a proletarian social
revolution remained the only alternative. To that end, he recognises that it is first
necessary for the proletariat to become fully conscious of its socioeconomic situa-
tion, and gain the revolutionary power to change it. As I have pointed out earlier,
when the masses regard the cholera epidemic of 1831/32 as a plot of the rich to
poison them, Börne asserts that this deluded notion is a displaced expression of an
awakening consciousness that, under capitalism, the workers have been degraded
to a disposable tool: “ein schlechtes Handwerkszeug” that one can dispose of when
it is broken or no longer usable (cf. Börne 1964 III, 378). As Börne prophesies,
further resistance will cause the proletarian consciousness to mature. When reflec-
tion subsequently sets in, social revolution will be inevitable:

Geschah es denn aus Zärtlichkeit für das Volk, daß man es mit Kolbenstö-
ßen gezwungen, sich in die Spitäler bringen zu lassen, ihre Wohnung und
ihre Familie zu meiden? Es geschah um die Ängstlichkeit der Reichen zu
frönen. Haben sie denn sich nicht in allen Zeitungen den Trost zugerufen,
haben sie denn nicht gejubelt darüber: Die Krankheit treffe nur die Armen
und Niedrigen, die Reichen und Vornehmen hätten nichts von ihr zu fürch-
ten? Hört, liest denn das Volk solche Reden nicht, wird es nicht darüber
nachdenken? Ja, freilich, das beruhigt sie, daß das Volk nicht denkt. Aber
ihm ist der Gedanke Frucht, die Tat Wurzel, und wenn das Volk einmal zu
denken anfängt, ist für euch die Zeit des Bedenkens vorüber, und ihr ruft
sie nie zurück. – (Börne 1964 III, 378)

While the bourgeoisie cowardly deliberates and reflects (“Bedenken”) how to pro-
tect their system of exploitation and oppression, the proletariat is not stricken with
such pusillanimity. As Börne paradoxically maintains, in a juxtaposition of the
causal relationship between thought and action, “ihm ist der Gedanke Frucht, die

106 One might as go as far to argue that Börne here – to a considerable degree – anticipates a key as-
sertion that Marx and Engels put forward in the Das Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei more
than a decade later. As they maintain with the bourgeoisie becoming the hegemonic class, the
complex social relationships between the different social classes have given way to a polarised
class struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie: “Unsere Epoche, die Epoche der Bourgeoi-
sie, zeichnet sich jedoch dadurch aus, daß sie die Klassengegensätze vereinfacht hat. Die ganze
Gesellschaft spaltet sich mehr und mehr in zwei große feindliche Lager, in zwei große, einander
direkt gegenüberstehende Klassen: Bourgeoisie und Proletariat” (MEW IV, 463).
252

Tat Wurzel.” Instead of cementing the social status quo through mental hypertro-
phy, fruitless debates, and philosophical speculation, as the bourgeoisie does, the
proletariat is in the process of acquiring an authentic social consciousness through
practical action and resistance that will lead to a revolutionary change of the social
condition.

3.4 “With upright Toasting Fork and Toothless Cat”:

The Impending Proletarian Revolt Against the Effete Bourgeoisie in Bed-
does and Büchner

To throw a final spotlight on the paradigm shift from political to social revolution
in the 1830s and early 1840s I want briefly to investigate some of Thomas Lovell
Beddoes’ writings from this period. Beddoes, an English playwright, poet, doctor,
and radical, lived in exile in Germany and Switzerland from 1826 until his death
in 1848 and had close contacts with radical movements in both places.107 I have
shown elsewhere how throughout the 1820s he adhered to a concept of bourgeois
political revolution. This ideological stance is prominently reflected in the earlier
versions (the so-called
- and -version) of his fragmentary major oeuvre, the farci-
cal Gothic tragedy Death’s Jest-Book (see Hörmann 2007b, 81-88).
However, the general disappointment with the July Revolution among leftist
writers also affected him and led to a decisive radicalisation in his revolutionary
ideology. Like Börne, he criticised the French bourgeois regime for being as tyran-
nical in a socio-political respect as the restored Bourbon monarchy that it had re-
placed. An article he wrote for the journal Bayerisches Volksblatt (No. 19/14 Febru-
ary 1832) on the revolutionary changes in France strikingly demonstrates this. In
it he asserts “dass das nackte Unrecht der Menschheit sich nicht mit den Lumpen
der Restauration zu bedecken und erwärmen braucht” (Beddoes 1935, 562). Now,
with the rags of the restoration having been ripped off the body politic, it becomes
obvious that a mere political change is insufficient to bring about social justice.
A further article published in the same periodical, a whimsical allegorical depic-
tion of the French politician Casimir Périer (1832), alleges that the latter’s liberal
government is neither fish nor fowl, neither monarchy nor republic, but a hybrid:

107 For Beddoes’ role in the Bavarian radical-revolutionary movement and a discussion of his politi-
cal articles, see Burwick 1969 and Polster 1989, 185-188. For his importance for the German
radical movement in Switzerland, see Burwick 1972. A detailed investigation of Beddoes’ exact
involvement with the German democratic-revolutionary movement is still outstanding.
 253

a “Zwittertier” (1935, 571). It belongs to the species doctrinaire, the political fac-
tion of the liberal-bourgeois royalists during the Restoration (1814-1830), and
as such is already an anachronism. Punning on the established term for the new
socio-political order, juste milieu, Beddoes terms it Triste milieu and depicts it as a
monstrous but at the same time weak and effete bat that will soon be overthrown
by its lower-class enemies. The latter are also allegorised as animals, but in contrast
to the bourgeois bat, they are depicted as deadly predators. “[I]m Kampfe mit den
fliegenden und kriegenden Geschöpfen,” the liberal system “Perier” designed will
soon be overthrown by the revolutionary masses. The bat will end up “im Rachen
des Wolfes,” the latter word rhyming with ‘Volkes,’ thus implying that the people
will soon devour the bat allegorising the liberal monarchic system:

Das freudenlose grässliche Thier heisst Perier, zugehörig dem Geschlechte

der Doctrinair’s, der sogenannten Wolkentreter und Erdsegler, sein Schat-
ten heisst Bürger-König, seine helldunkle Ritze Triste milieu. Armseliges Ge-
schöpf! wie lang gedenkst Du noch so auszuhalten? (Beddoes 1935, 571;
italics in original)

In the later article “Gratulazions-Projekt,” which Beddoes wrote for the Swiss radi-
cal journal Der Schweizerische Republikaner (No. 33/23 April 1833), his criticism of
the socially repressive nature of liberalism becomes even more pronounced. In this
whimsical contribution to mark the occasion of St. George’s Day, he caricatures
at once Swiss and British politics, merging them in such a way that they become
impossible to distinguish. Provocatively, he thus implies that there is little differ-
ence between Britain’s monarchic system and the Swiss liberal republics, at least
as far as their respective stance towards the lower classes is concerned. Attacking
the liberal government of Zurich, he alleges that to secure its rule it is dependent
on the services of a brutal militia that it employed against the discontented lower
classes. Sarcastically, he praises the militia with the following hyperbolical attribute
as the “Zierde unser vortrefflichen, städtischen, Wälle und liberale Regierung ver-
theidigenden, Soldateska” (quoted in Burwick 1972, 94).
However, Beddoes maintains that the rule of the liberal bourgeoisie is not only
dependent on suppressing the lower classes militarily but also socioeconomically.
Although the repressive state and its political repression still form major targets for
the agitation – as is traditional in the radical discourse – attacks against socioeco-
nomic oppression, at the same time, take a more prominent place. Beddoes’ rheto-
ric in his “Gratulazions-Projekt” forms a prime example of this development as it
inextricably intertwines political and socioeconomic criticism of the government.
254

This nexus becomes very apparent in a further passage from this article. It alludes
to an event in the canton of Basel in 1832 (which Beddoes, referring to the Biblical
myth of hubris against God, names “Babel”), when the liberal government brutally
tried to crush a socioeconomically motivated peasant revolt:108

Was wollen wir ihm geben, dem theuren Helden, der die Bauern von Babel
frikassiert und ihre Freiheitsbäume in die Hosen schob. – Sollen wir ihm ge-
ben den kostbaren habersackprügelnden Sarraß des Sultans Bimbambi? – Er
hat ihn schon. – Eine schöne Sklavin? Er hat deren schon über fünfzig. –
Geld? – Er hat dessen im Ueberfluß. (Quoted in Burwick 1972, 94)

In this satire that is directed as much against the Swiss authorities as against the
British monarch, Beddoes implies that the liberal bourgeoisie will resort to any
means to protect its wealth and safeguard its rule against its class enemies. As he
alleges, it will not even shy away from massacring the lower classes, if they protest
against the dire socioeconomic situation. Its military “frikassirt” the peasants, as if
they were pieces of meat to be cut up and stewed. The “theur[e] Hel[d],” the mili-
tary, is dear to the bourgeoisie in a double sense, since it not only defies the spec-
tre of a proletarian-plebeian revolution, but also enables the governing classes to
pocket and acquire even more wealth in spite of owning an abundance of it already.
This strategy is the same in liberal republican Switzerland as it is in monarchic
Britain. Apart from the colonial exploitation throughout the British Empire with
its more than fifty colonies – which Switzerland lacks and which Beddoes meta-
phorically likens to beautiful female slaves – Britain and Switzerland are regarded
as equally repressive in socioeconomic terms. Also the Swiss local governments
quell any lower-class protest with brutal military force, as both the bitter conflict
near Basel and the behaviour of the president of Zurich (“des Sultans Bimbambi”)
prove. The latter, who used the military against the protesting peasants, is signifi-
cantly linked to a despotic Oriental ruler. In extremely dense language that is hard
to penetrate due to its idiosyncratic syntax and imagery, Beddoes further radicalises
his allegations against the liberal government of Zurich when he metonymically
names its military the most precious asset. Beddoes refers to the latter as a valuable
heavy scimitar, whose sole purpose it is to strike down unruly peasants (“den kost-
baren habersackprügelnden Sarraß”). These are also recalled by a metonymy that

108 James Murray Luck even goes as far as to call this conflict a “civil war” (1985, 352). In the
“Fünfundzwanzigsten Brief ” of his Briefe aus Paris regards the events in Basel as a prelude to a
potential social revolution: “In Basel sind sie jetzt eingesperrt, die hochmütigen Ellenritter. Sie
wollen allein regieren, das Landvolk soll gehorchen. Aber das Landvolk kennt seine Rechte und
will sie geltend machen und belagert die Stadt” (1964 III, 123).
 255

forms the root of the neologism “habersackprügelnden.” Reduced to the fodder

bags of their working animals (‘Habersäcke’), the peasants, upon which the blows
of scimitars rain down, are stripped off their humanity. Already before the military
strikes them, they are the target of socioeconomic repression which degrades them
to a subhuman, near animal-like state.
Beddoes’ articles written between 1831 and 1833 are scathingly critical of
the liberal bourgeoisie and its rule. They strongly suggest that in the early 1830s
Beddoes had already abandoned his former belief that a mere political revolution
against a monarchic system of government and the establishment of a republican
system would secure a more just society. In 1831 he even appears to affirm the
idea of “allgemeiner Gütergemeinschaft” and hence decisively moves towards a
concept of social revolution and early socialism.109 When Beddoes advocates the
egalitarian concept of a community of goods, he adopts an avant-garde position
among the German revolutionaries. According to Ruckhäberle, this concept did
not become widespread in German revolutionary pamphlets until the mid and late
1830s (1975, 225-231). As he points out, the only known contemporary instance
of a call for a general community of goods in Germany was voiced at the mani-
festation in Zweibrücken in 1832, a parallel event to the ‘Hambacher Fest.’ As an
official report claims, journeymen and “einige Bürger der niederen Klasse” carried
a banner bearing the slogan: “Gleiche Güterverteilung” (Quoted in Ruckhäberle
1975, 229). At most, pamphlets demanded a limited redistribution of goods, as for
instance one entitled Deutschlands Wiedergeburt (1832). Even the early proletarian
pamphlet Glaubensbekenntnisß eines Geächteten (1834) only campaigns cautiously
for: “Annähernde Gleichheit im Güterbesitz” (Quoted in Ruckhäberle 1977, 134,
emphasis in the original).
Beddoes’ ideological shift from a political to a social revolution is not only
reflected in his articles but also in the revisions that he undertook in the -version
of Death’s Jest-Book between 1829 and the mid-1840s. In the revised first Act of
Beddoes’ play, we find a passage in Scene 1 that mirrors – on an ideological level –
Blanqui’s and Börne’s view of a war between the rich and the poor. Like Börne,
Beddoes also reflects both growing socioeconomic injustice and resistance to it by
the exploited.110 Seemingly only referring to the play’s pseudo-medieval world of

109 “Die Gespenster,” Bayerisches Volksblatt (suppl.) (27 April 1831), quoted in Burwick 1969, 297.
110 Titmouse’s nonsensical social ballad about a starving tailor who steals eggs from a witch to
survive and is transformed into a human hen that lays eggs, clearly shows Beddoes’ heightened
awareness of socioeconomic oppression (-version: I, 4, ll. 74-121; Beddoes 1935, 381-383).
The increasing industrialisation of the traditional artisan professions led to an enormous rise in
unemployment, deprivation, and proletarianisation among the craftsmen and women, both in
256

robber barons, the play’s villain, the fool (and usurper) Isbrand, cynically exposes
the underlying system of socioeconomic exploitation that guarantees the perpetua-
tion of the injustices of the feudal system. I would argue, however, that his remarks
also refer to the contemporary situation in the 1830s and 1840s when economic
liberalism was in the ascendancy. The notion that capitalism constitutes a continu-
ation of the right of might, of the anarchy of the dark ages, is present in both Börne
and Blanqui. Börne in the “Siebzigster Brief ” of the Briefe aus Paris (1833) com-
pares the exploitative practices of the capitalists to the crimes of medieval “Rau-
britter” (cf. 1964 III, 473; Börne’s emphasis), while Blanqui in his defence speech
at the ‘Court des Assizes’ of the Département Seine (January 1832) alleges that
contemporary capitalist socioeconomic exploitation is just another form of rob-
bery, as it took place between feudal barons and travelling merchants: “Mir däucht,
dieß ist, nur unter einer andern Form, und zwischen andern Gegnern, der Krieg
der Feudalbarone gegen die Kaufleute, die sie auf offenen Heerwegen anfielen und
plünderten” (Blanqui 2000, 199).
Similarly, in the final version of Death’s Jest-Book, Beddoes stresses, like Blanqui
and Börne, that these rapacious and exploitative practices are not limited to this
particular period. While Börne claims that social injustice is an evil that has af-
flicted society for three thousand years already (cf. Börne 1964 III, 372), Beddoes
suggests that the present social repression is but one stage in the “real history of
the World” (-version: I, 1, ll. 123-124; Beddoes 1935, 333) that is fundamentally
based on exploiting the majority of humankind. In Death’s Jest-Book we find a so-
cially divided society, which is characterised by a strong socio-revolutionary poten-
tial, but which, however, at present largely remains latent. As Isbrand makes clear
in his sarcastic speech, the poor have never been free in the entire course of history
but have always been the slaves of the rich. Indeed for the poor, the sole purpose
of living is to ensure the material well-being of the rich, with the consequence that
the former are driven literally to the brink of starvation, while the latter grow fatter
and fatter:

A whole people is stout and surly, being mostly certain steaks and Barons of
beef gone human: another, after a century of amphibious diet, owes to the
frog’s legs in its wooden shoes the agility with which it jumps over gentle
King Log, and devotes itself patriotically to the appetite of Emperor Stork,

Germany and Britain. For two contemporary social realist ballads that indict this development
with particular regard to the tailoring sector, see e.g. Thomas Hood’s “Song of the Shirt” (1843)
and Georg Weerth’s “Es war ein armer Schneider” (1845) in chapter 4.3 of this study.
 257
his follower: aye, it would even blow itself up to be bull itself. (-version: I,
1, ll. 123-129; Beddoes 1935, 333)

What Isbrand allegorically pictures here – “in Æsop’s fable-book in masquerade”

(-version: I, 1, l. 123; Beddoes 1935, 333) – is an extremely polarised society of
idle consumers and slaving producers.111 The rich are fat, complacent, lethargic,
and bad-tempered (“stout and surly”), while the poor are lean and supple, due to
the toil that their struggle for subsistence necessarily entails. Again – as in the arti-
cle “Gratulazions-Projekt” – animal imagery pervades the rhetoric. While the rich
are metaphorically linked to fattened cattle (“Barons of beef gone human”), the
poor are described as shrivelled amphibious animals, as frogs. Since the frogs – in
contrast to the stuffed “bull[s]” – are able to move very quickly, both on land and
in water, they could theoretically overcome their degenerate rulers. To use Isbrand’s
image, they can easily jump over their “gentle King Log.”112 In other words, the
socio-revolutionary potential of the poor is high. However, a major ideological de-
lusion prevents them from staging a social revolution against the complacent mid-
dle classes, the fat bulls. Rather than revolting against the rich, they try to emulate
them, as Isbrand – alluding to Æsop’s fable “The Frog and the Ox” – expresses in
a pun on bulls and bullfrog. The frogs would do anything; they “would even blow
[themselves] up to be bull.” Yet, by imitating them, the poor are not being trans-
formed into proper well-nourished bulls, but still remain voracious but starving
bullfrogs. If instead the poor used their superior agility and strength in numbers to
attack the bourgeoisie, they would easily manage to overthrow them. However, be-
ing caught up in a system of severe repression and extensive state propaganda, they
have neither been able to develop the means to revolt effectively nor to become
fully conscious of the extent to which they are being exploited: two key precondi-
tions for a successful social revolution. For the moment, the poor ‘frogs’ are still in
the grip of the ideology of the ruling class when they devote themselves “patrioti-
cally to the appetite of the Emperor Stork,” who is their natural archenemy. When
the poor are feeding the rich, they are tragically caught up in the delusion that they
are performing this sacrifice for a greater good, such as the fatherland. Yet, ironi-
cally the only ones to benefit from their sufferings are the rich.

111 Isbrand here alludes to two of Æsop’s fables, “The Frogs Desiring a King” and “The Frog and the
Ox.” Both warn that a false consciousness of the oppressed regarding their own power and that
of their rulers may have fatal consequences.
112 In my opinion, the attribute “gentle” must be understood as highly ironic in the context of
Death’s Jest-Book’s anti-monarchic ideology. In Æsop’s fable, the king that Jove has sent the frogs
actually is a log. The frogs, however, are deluded into thinking that he is their powerful and
rightful monarch.
258

Such a grim outlook on a society that is characterised by stark social divisions and
an impending class war is reminiscent of the socio-revolutionary views of Georg
Büchner.113 In his farcical comedy Leonce und Lena (written 1836-1837), which is
a bitter satire of a fictitious German mini-kingdom, he puts forward a comparable
socio-revolutionary ideology with similar imagery. As in the passage from Death’s
Jest-Book quoted above, the metaphors are taken from the semantic fields of food
and animals. When in a draft version of Büchner’s play the fool Valerio stresses
the “Fleiß” of the ants and paradoxically regards them as “ein sehr nützliches Un-
geziefer” (Büchner 2002 I, 137-138), he is talking about the labouring poor with
the voice of the rich. Indeed, one could spot in Valerio’s words an inverted echo
of Blanqui’s defence speech. As pointed out in the preceding subchapter, Blanqui
mocks the rich portraying the poor as ferocious animals: “gerne würden sie vom
Volke sagen: ‘Diese Bestie ist so wild, daß sie sich vertheidigt, wenn man sie an-
greift’” (Blanqui 2000, 199). Similarly, Büchner, through his fool Valerio, and
Beddoes, through his fool Isbrand, mock the contempt of the rich for the poor.
Both are employing – in a grotesquely exaggerated manner – the cynical discourse
the rich use to talk about the poor. On another occasion, Valerio even sarcastically
comments on this ideological-rhetorical strategy. As he expresses it with a para-
doxical neologism, the rich talk very “philobestialisch” of the poor (III, 1; 2002 I,
120). Not only do they speak contemptuously of the poor – considering them as
a cross between humans and animals as the term “philobestialisch” implies – but
they are at the same time misguided in their patronising and belittling attitude to-
wards the poor that consists in ultimately reducing them to animals. As both fools
reveal, regarding the poor as harmless and useful slaves is as wrong as it is danger-
ous. Isbrand warns in his allegorical language that the bullfrogs might eventually
triumph over the bulls. Valerio points out that even the seemingly harmless and
useful ants are “wieder nicht so nützlich, als wenn sie gar keinen Schaden thäten”
(2002 I, 138). In a similar vein, but even more sarcastically, he exclaims shortly af-
terwards: “Seht, was man nicht mit einem Floh ausrichten kann!” (139) Using the
allegory of the poor as vermin, he emphasises their potential power to overthrow
the present system if they unite against it. Despite all the efforts of the ruling class
to vilify, to contain and belittle them, the power of the unified masses constitutes
the basis for any potential social revolution.

113 As far as I know, Frederick Burwick is the only critic who has argued for a connection between
Beddoes’ and Büchner’s works (1971 & 1987). There is proof that Beddoes and Büchner met
in Zurich. As Burwick has shown, Beddoes was the assistant doctor treating Büchner during his
terminal illness in January and February 1837 (1971, 5). Furthermore, both were briefly and
concurrently associated with the same department (Anatomy) at the University of Zurich.
 259

The harsh confrontation between the rich and the poor is vividly enacted in the
final two scenes of Büchner’s play. In Scene III, 2 we witness how the poor prepare
for sumptuous wedding celebrations of the royal couple, Prince Leonce and Prin-
cess Lena.114 A schoolmaster who is himself on the brink of starvation has to drill a
group of starving peasants to applaud the royal couple when they will pass by. Cut-
ting from the world of the poor to the world of the rich, the next scene shows the
lavish wedding preparations at the royal court. We hear the master of ceremonies
complaining that the mountains of food prepared for the wedding are perishing,
since the rich are too caught up in self-indulgent ennui to eat it:

Es ist ein Jammer. Alles geht zu Grund. Die Braten schnurren ein. […] Alle
Vatermörder legen sich um, wie melancholische Schweinsohren […] und
der Hofpoet grunzt [...], wie ein bekümmertes Meerschweinchen [...]. Alles
Fleisch verdirbt vom Stehen. (III, 3; Büchner 2002 I, 122)

By contrast, the peasants who are made to stand in spite of nearly collapsing from
hunger are mercifully granted that they “einmal in [ihrem] Leben einen Braten
riech[en]” (III, 2; 121). In the passage above, Büchner indicts this inhuman be-
haviour towards the poor as well as the related inhumane discourse. Subverting it,
he turns it against the rich. When they treat the poor worse than animals, the rich
become ‘pigs’ themselves in the figurative sense of the word, as the reference to pigs
in the words “Schweinsohren” and “Meerschweinchen” implies.
This inhuman treatment naturally breeds strong social resentment among the
oppressed towards their oppressors. However – comparable to the passage above
from Death’s Jest-Book – the poor are not yet ready to overthrow their oppressors.
There they even affirm – in words that resemble above passage from Leonce und
Leana – their willingness to serve as ‘food’ for the rich and sacrifice themselves in
this cause. As the lower-class ‘fool’ Mandrake asserts in cannibalistic imagery that
again blurs the boundaries between humans and animals:

MANDR. All, Sir Knight: the very pigs and capons chuck and grunt their
magnanimous resolution to yield up their four-footed and biped ghosts
without a squeak against the Cook Destiny. To be sausage in such a cause
is superhuman: a flitch, or still more roasted whole, is so enviable that were
I not Mandrake I could wish myself a cow or a calf; and that, if possible,

114 Büchner, in this scene, sarcastically parodies an actual royal wedding between the successor to
the Dukedom of Hesse and Princess Mathilde of Bavaria, which took place January 5 and 6,
1834. The wedding celebrations are depicted in a chronicle on which Büchner’s social satire is
mainly based (for excerpts from the chronicle, see Büchner 2002 I, 652-657).
260
monstrous: with eight legs and double-headed, to be eaten two-fold on such
a patriotic expedition […]. (-version: I, 1, l. 12; Beddoes 1935, 333)115

While in Leonce und Lena the poor do not envisage such a drastic self-sacrifice to
feed the rich, they also do not seem ready yet for revolutionary action: their revolu-
tionary power is still misdirected and auto-aggressive. In mockery of the festivities
of the rich, they will perform a proto-revolutionary “transparenten Ball mittelst
der Löcher in [ihren] Jacken und Hosen, und schlagen [sich] mit [ihren] Fäusten
Kokarden an die Köpfe,” the schoolmaster announces (III, 2; 122). The cockades –
a prominent revolutionary insignia – are bruises inflicted on each other’s heads and
not on the heads of their oppressors. There can neither be any doubt of the strong
socio-revolutionary potential that manifests itself in this scene nor of the fact that
Büchner believed that the poor would eventually overthrow the equally degener-
ate classes: the aristocracy and bourgeoisie, which together make up “die abgelebte
moderne Gesellschaft,” as Büchner expresses it in a letter to Gutzkow in June 1836
(2002 II, 440).116
In short, as the intertextual reading of these passages from the -version of
Death’s Jest-Book and Leonce and Lena suggests, Beddoes was as far from aban-
doning his belief in revolutionary change as was Büchner. It is not an abstract
and depoliticised “larger revolution of man against the dehumanizing factors of
all political strife and all mechanistic schemes,” as Frederick Burwick maintains,
that increasingly preoccupied Beddoes and Büchner (1987, 300). Pivotally, as
Terence M. Holmes emphasises, “it was only after the fatalism experience that
[Büchner] seriously engaged in revolutionary experience” (1995b, 66-67; Holmes’
emphasis). Much earlier, in 1937, Lukács had already illustrated how all critical
accounts to cast Büchner as a fatalist who had become disillusioned with socio-
revolutionary change must be seen as attempts to de-radicalise him and make his
ideology compatible with the ideological aims of the critic.117 Moreover, Burwick’s
115 Again the parallels to a fragmentary draft version of Leonce and Lena are striking. The material
fool Valerio also wishes to be transformed into a species of meat cattle, an oxen, to be eaten
afterwards. Yet, in sharp contrast to Mandrake, Valerio wants devour ‘himself.’ Thus he hopes to
profit “two-fold” from this act of ‘auto-cannibalism’, first by eating the luscious grass and then
the oxen who has grazed on it: “Ach, Herr, was ich ein Gefühl für die Natur habe. Das Gras
steht so schön, daß man ein Ochs sein möchte um es fressen zu könne [sic] und dann wieder ein
Mensch, um den Ochsen zu fressen, der solches Gras gefressen” (Büchner 2002 I, 137).
116 For an interpretation of this letter, see for instance Hörmann 2007c, 99. In particular, I em-
phasise the crucial role of a quasi-religious, powerful socio-revolutionary ideology that Büchner
considers vital for proletarian revolution.
117 Lukàcs exposes this strategy as he investigates the ideological appropriation of Büchner by Nazi
academics, in particular Karl Viëtor (See Lukàcs 1990). Among more recent critics, Christian
 261

argument is not supported by either Death’s Jest-Book or by any of Büchner’s works.

On the contrary, what we find in the -version of Beddoes’ play is a significant
move away from a purely political towards a social revolution, a change that the
younger Büchner had already undergone before writing his first play Dantons Tod
in 1835. Far from abandoning politics for philosophy, a revolution against the
socio-political system for a metaphysical revolution against politics, Büchner and
Beddoes were among the avant-garde of revolutionary writers of their time. As the
-version of the first act as well as Beddoes’ continued political writings and poetry
suggest, it was no longer a bourgeois political revolution in which he put his hope,
but an eventual proletarian social revolution. For both Beddoes and Büchner, the
degenerate bourgeoisie had lost all the revolutionary spirit it once possessed. As
Büchner writes in a letter to Gutzkow in 1835 – again employing the imagery of
food and eating in a revolutionary context – the bourgeois revolution “muß von
der ungebildeten und armen Klasse aufgefressen werden; das Verhältnis zwischen
Armen und Reichen ist das einzige revolutionäre Element in der Welt, der Hunger
allein […] die Freiheitsgöttin” (2002 II, 400).
Most strongly and poignantly, Beddoes voices a comparable view not in Death’s
Jest-Book, but in one of his last poems that the editor H. W. Donner entitled “Lines
written in Switzerland” (Beddoes 1935, 156-158). In Geoffrey Wagner’s opinion,
this fragmentary poem shows how much “Beddoes loathed capitalism” (1949,
423). At the very least, it is strongly critical of British capitalism, which it accuses
of being based on “slave-raised” (cf. l. 32; 156) profits, even several years after the
emancipation of Britain’s colonial slaves in 1838. With exploitation abounding
Hauschild has influentially argued that Büchner’s so-called ‘Fatalismusbrief ’ to his fiancée (Jan-
uary 1834) cannot be regarded as proof that Büchner had abandoned the idea of revolutionary
change (see Hauschild 1989). However, the most detailed and compelling investigation of the
apparent paradox between Büchner’s alleged fatalism and his obvious revolutionary commit-
ment is to be found in a chapter of Terence Holmes’ study of his revolutionary politics. Pre-
senting a summary and an evaluation of the existing criticism that engages with this quandary,
Holmes finds a convincing way out of this critical impasse. Drawing on Thomas Mayer’s reading
of the letter, he underlines that Büchner’s ‘fatalism’ should be understood in the contemporary
sense of the French term “‘fatalité,’” “a necessity arising out of the chain of cause and effect, and
very often applied to a socially determined phenomena” (1995b, 69). On this basis, Holmes
distinguishes a transformation in Büchner’s revolutionary ideology that began immediately after
writing the ‘Fatalismusbrief ’ and is closely related to the change from a concept of political to
social revolution. According to Holmes, this transition in the revolutionary paradigm is instru-
mental for Büchner overcoming his revolutionary disillusion that he shared with a large part of
the European revolutionary radicals after the 1830 July Revolution. Acknowledging the fact that
any merely political revolution solely results in the ascendency of the bourgeoisie and further so-
cial inequality, Holmes maintains that Büchner acquired the belief in the necessity, “the ‘fatalité’
of popular revolution” (71).
262

both at home and abroad in the colonies, the poem depicts a doubly explosive
social situation. Even the patriotic myth of the British Empire – traditionally a po-
tent ideological tool to pacify the discontented masses – is shown to be crumbling.
This is epitomised in the decline of the sublime Goddess Britannia to a mundane
bourgeois figure minted “on a copper coin.” Her fierce companion, the Lion, is
turned into a harmless “toothless cat” and instead of the deadly trident she holds a
“toasting fork” in her hand (cf. ll. 31-34; 156-157).
Under these circumstances, it was highly doubtful that the British bourgeoisie
might be able to stem the rising socio-revolutionary tide for much longer. If not
in the countryside, at least in the industrial cities of Britain such as Manchester
social unrest among the proletariat was brewing. In an allusion to the Italian vol-
cano and lake Avernus, whose crater in antiquity was thought to be an entrance to
the underworld and whose noxious fumes were supposed to be very potent, one
of the foremost seaports of the British Empire, “Pestiferous Liverpool,” is termed
“Ocean-Avernus” (cf. ll. 26-27; 156). It is allegorised not only as the entrance to
the hell of industrial capitalism and colonial exploitation, but it also suggests –
through the revolutionary connotations of the volcano image – violent resistance
by the oppressed both at home and abroad. The modern proletariat will not devote
itself much longer “patriotically to the appetite” of the ruling class as the lower
orders do in the neo-feudal world of Death’s Jest-Book. When the proletariat man-
ages to overcome its remaining ideological illusions, its conditioned fear of the
ruling class, and its system of control, the latter’s days are numbered, the poem
prophesies. A faint but clear socio-revolutionary voice is already audible in its
revolutionary-apocalyptic scenario, which is strongly reminiscent of Percy Bysshe
Shelley’s Mask of Anarchy. Like the voice of the allegorical Phantom figure, the
Shape in Shelley’s poem, it will also increase in volume and intensity. Depending
on the listener’s political attitude, this spectre of social revolution might either be
interpreted as triumphantly proclaiming the doom of bourgeois rule through im-
pending proletarian revolution or warning starkly of such a disquieting scenario:

Be proud of Manchester
Pestiferous Liverpool, Ocean-Avernus,
Where bullying blasphemy, like a slimy lie,
Creeps to the highest church’s pinnacle,
And glistening infects the light of heaven
O flattering likeness on a copper coin!
Sit still on your slave-raised cotton ball,
With upright toasting fork and toothless cat:
The country clown still holds her for a lion.
 263
The voice, the voice! when the affrighted herds
Dash heedless to the edge of craggy abysses,
[...] But clearer, though not loud, a voice is heard
Of proclamation or of warning stern. (ll. 26-41; Beddoes 1935, 156-157)
4. The Drama of Class Struggle and Social Revolution:
Marx, Georg Weerth and the Evolution of a Socialist Poetics
of Revolution

4.1 Proletarian Tragedy and Social Consciousness

4.1.1 Tragic and Anti-tragic Proletarian Social Consciousness

So far this study has discussed in how far certain selected German and English
authors shifted from a concept of political revolution to one of social revolution.
This final chapter will broaden this perspective by investigating how the German
socio-revolutionary vanguard, the Communists around Marx and Engels, were
developing a virtual ‘poetics of revolution’ that incorporated the fundamental dis-
tinction between proletarian social and bourgeois political revolution. While (as
pointed out earlier) the bourgeois political revolution changes only the political
system, the proletarian social revolution aims to fundamentally transform the soci-
oeconomic system as well. Additionally, for Marx, the concept of proletarian social
revolution also carries a strong social and philosophical implication, since it seeks
to reverse human alienation. For this radical new type of revolution, a novel form
of representation is required, too. As Marx insists in Der achtzehnte Brumaire des
Louis Bonaparte (1852), the social revolution of the 19th century must take its “po-
esy” from the future not from the past (cf. MEGA XI, 101). As the Greek literary
term “Poesie” suggests in its etymology (poēsis ‘making poetry,’ ‘creating’), Marx’s
novel representation of revolution draws heavily upon ancient literary concepts.
Rather than relating to poetry, however, Marx recalls dramatic poetological con-
cepts, in particular those of the dramatic spectacles and genres of tragedy, comedy,
and farce. While Marx develops, revises, and sophisticates his revolutionary theory
between the mid-1840s and the mid-1850s, he, at the same time, writes a literary
meta-theory of revolution, a ‘poetics of revolution.’
Besides Marx, the German poet, journalist, and businessman Georg Weerth
was pivotal in drawing up a poetics of revolution that incorporated the elements of
tragedy and farce. Unlike Marx, he first starts to develop his poetics in ‘poesy’, in
 265

the socially critical poems that he wrote in the mid-1840s. Weerth underwent the
shift towards a proletarian social revolution around the same time as Marx and En-
gels did,1 in the years between 1843 and 1845. As critics have conclusively shown,2
the firsthand experience of the social conditions of the proletariat during his stay
of two and a half years (December 1843 to April 1846) in Bradford (then a boom-
ing industrial city that harboured some of the worst slums in Britain),3 as well
as the encounter with Engels, who stayed in nearby Manchester, turned Weerth
into a Communist. Writing to his mother during a business trip from Bruxelles
(where he had met Marx) on 19 July 1845, Weerth announces his conversion to
communism and his admiration for Engels, particularly for his recently published
study Die Lage der arbeitenden Klassen in England (1845). As the elevation of their
fight to a life-and-death struggle shows, he assigns a highly dramatic dimension to
the actions of the working-class movement, which he metaphorically likens to a
military campaign:

Ich gehöre zu den “Lumpen-Kommunisten”, welche man so sehr mit Kot

bewirft und deren einziges Verbrechen ist, daß sie für Arme und Unter-
drückte zu Felde ziehen und den Kampf auf Leben und Tod führen. Laß die
Herren des Besitzes sich in acht nehmen, die kräftigen Arme des Volkes sind
auf unsrer Seite, und die ersten Geister aller Nationen treten nach und nach
zu uns über – Da ist mein sehr lieber Freund Fried[rich] Engels aus Barmen,

1 For a very informative article on how the English context influenced Engels’ ideological turn
(taking place between 1842 and 1845) from a concept of gradual peaceful social reform to a
scenario of a violent, proletarian social revolution, see Claeys 1985. He also mentions Weerth as
an astute observer of the interrelation between Owenism and Chartism and how the influence
of the former led to a split among the Chartist leaders on the question of revolutionary violence
(cf. 1985, 464).
2 In particular Weerth’s biographer Uwe Zemke has maintained that Weerth’s time in Bradford
was formative for his further socio-ideological development (1988, 157-159, 1993, 114-115).
He concludes that Weerth “in weniger als 1½ Jahren seines Bradford-Aufenthalts, zuerst an-
geregt von Engels und dann bestärkt durch die Eindrücke seiner Umwelt und den Kontakt zur
Arbeiterklasse, zum Kommunisten geworden [war]” (1988, 158). Mary Kemp-Ashraf (1974,
59) and Werner Feudel (1974, 13) detect a similar change in Weerth’s ideology during his stay
in Bradford.
3 As contemporary official reports confirm, the living conditions of the poor in Bradford were
among the worst in England (see Zemke 1988, 142, Kemp-Ashraf 1974, 45-46). The life ex-
pectancy of the working classes was a mere 17 years, partly due to the extremely high infant
mortality rate (see Zemke 1988, 141 & Kemp-Ashraf 1974, 46). In the revised version of his
essay on the British workers Weerth cites extensively from a report in Bradford (commissioned
by an assembly of wool combers) that provides graphic evidence of the atrocious living condi-
tions in one of Bradford slums (see Weerth 1957 III, 224-228).
266
der hat ein Buch zugunsten der englischen Arbeiter geschrieben und die
Fabrikanten mit vollem Recht schrecklich gegeißelt. Sein eigner Vater hat
Fabriken in England und Deutschland. (Weerth 1989 I, 320)

Probably largely to reassure his mother who was less than pleased with her son’s
political activities, Weerth here still portrays the working-class movement as a
predominantly bourgeois-led endeavour. However, as I will show, his concrete
depictions of the British worker tell a different story, of an increasing self-aware
and socially conscious proletariat, endeavouring to think and act independently.
Weerth’s radical ideological reorientation also had a deep impact on his journalistic
and poetic works. Within the span of a mere two years, he changed from a writer
of neo-Romantic poems and drinking songs to an aggressively social-critical and
highly socio-revolutionary poet: a dramatic change that earned him the epithet
“der erste und bedeutendste Dichter des deutschen Proletariats,” which Engels fa-
mously bestowed on him posthumously (MEW XXI, 6).4
Maybe most conspicuously, the shift in Weerth’s ideological stance becomes
evident if one compares two of his poems from different years which deal with the
same topic: the misery of the small winegrowers on the Rhine and Moselle. The
first one called “Der Wein ist nicht geraten” was published in the Kölnische Zei-
tung (No. 316/12 November 1843), the second one “Die Winzer,”5 which Bruno
Kaiser dates as having been written in 1845 (see Weerth 1956 I, 301), was never
published during Weerth’s lifetime. The older poem, composed in the year 1843,
when a failure of the harvest had subjected many winegrowers to utter deprivation
and starvation which caused a wide public echo, reflects melancholically on their
plight. Full of resignation, it even implies in Stanza 7 that all that remains for the
peasants is either to starve to death or to kill themselves and their families. Instead
of “die Hände […] an die Kelter [legen],” the winegrower will ‘Hand an sich legen’
which is the euphemism for suicide that is recalled in these lines:

Du [der Weinbauer] wirst die Hände legen

Nicht an die Kelter dein!
4 In an article from 1893, Franz Mehring agrees with Engels’ verdict on Weerth being the fore-
most poet of the contemporary German proletariat. Comparing him with Freiligrath, another
contender for this title, he adds: “In der Tat sind seine sozialistischen und politischen Gedichte
denen Freiligraths an Originalität, Witz und namentlich an sinnlichem Feuer weit überlegen.”
(Mehring 1960 ff. XX, 621)
5 Bruno Kaiser, the editor of the only existing edition of Weerth’s works, heads it “Die rheinischen
Weinbauern” following the title under which it first appeared in 1883. However, the original ti-
tle in Weerth’s manuscript reads “Die Winzer.” Bernd Füllner, in his current edition of Weerth’s
works, opts for “Die Winzer,” as Weerth originally intended and as I will use in this study.
 267
Nun träuft des Weines Segen
Nicht in dein Faß hinein!
Du wirst kein Lied mehr singen!
Kein Brot und wärmend Kleid
Wirst du den Kindern bringen,
Ist alles rings verschneit! (Weerth 1956 I, 92)

This clichéd, emotive depiction of the peasant’s fate does not have any socio-revolu-
tionary dimension, as the repeated negations suggests which convey an atmosphere
of utter hopelessness. In its resigned sentimentality it could be said to propagate
the ‘wahren Sozialismus,’ which Engels defines as “ein sentimentales Abfinden”
with the existing circumstances; an aesthetic ideology that Engels attacks in his
article “Deutscher Sozialismus in Versen und Prosa” (1847). As in the poetry of
the “pomphaft-weinerliche Sozialismus” (cf. MEW IV, 221 & 222), any political
or social factors that caused, or at least precipitated, that crisis are not even taken
into account. Instead, the roots of the misery are seen as purely natural since rain,
snow, and frost have ruined the harvest:

[…] Da zog mit Stürmen

Der kalte Herbst daher:
Er sah die Wolken türmen
Sich rings so regenschwer.
Verschwunden ist sein Hoffen!
Das kurze Glück ist aus!
Von hartem Schlag getroffen
Geht weinend er nach Haus! (Weerth 1956 I, 91)

Weerth here casts the lot of the winegrowers as a ‘tragedy’ in a classical sense. The
analysis of the causes of the winegrowers’ misery as an act of God is a tragic inter-
pretation in the sense that higher powers are ultimately blamed for the protago-
nist’s downfall. In this perspective, not other humans but gods determine human
fate. The poem conveys such a view, as the winegrower’s earlier comment implies
when he is looking at the ripening grapes before the storms have struck: “Gott ist
mir gut gewesen” (91). Although the poem may question such naïve trust in divine
providence (perhaps even suggesting that such trust might be the peasant’s tragic
flaw), it does not offer an alternative interpretation of the event. No human agency
is to blame, solely the adverse weather.
As this interpretation of the poem suggests, Weerth here adopts a decidedly
non-communist view. Indeed, such a perspective is diametrically opposed to Marx’s
perspective on the same events, as he develops it in the articles on this crisis that he
268

writes earlier in same year for the Rheinische Zeitung. Marx identifies exploitative
(wine)-merchants, as well as an oppressive administration as the main culprits for
the winegrowers’ plight.6 Finally, to alleviate the misery of the winegrowers, the
speaker of Weerth’s poem does not advocate pressure on the government, let alone
direct revolutionary action by the proletariat, but instead appeals to the moral
conscience and charity of the bourgeois consumer, the hedonistic wine drinkers,

Die ihr im schmucken Saale,

Aus grünen Römern zecht,
Des Morgens Speciale,
Am Abend Schoppen stecht,
Die ihr bei Lust und Schmerzen
Verjubelt Nacht auf Nacht – Denkt, daß mit schwerem Herzen
Manch armer Winzer wacht!

Denkt, daß zu allen Tagen,

Denkt, daß bei uns von je
Man immer hörte sagen:
“Nur Wohl und Keinem Weh!”
Und laßt das Scherflein springen
So lustig an den Rhein,
Wie ich dies Lied tät singen
Frei in die Welt hinein! (Weerth 1956 I, 92-93)

As Florian Vaßen recognises, this final advice to the reader relates closely to the
ideology of the ‘wahren Sozialisten’ (1971, 82). Indeed Engels’ sarcastic gloss of
the poem “O, streutet Ihr den goldenen Segen!” by one of this school’s main expo-
nents, Karl Isidor Beck (published 1846 in the collection Lieder vom armen Mann)
equally applies to “Der Wein ist nicht geraten”: “Die Reichen werden aufgefordert,
dem Dürftigen eine Unterstützung angedeihen zu lassen” so that the rich person
can feel that he has been “ein guter Bürgersmann” (MEW IV, 214; Engels’ em-
phasis).
The perspective on the root causes of the peasants’ misery and the means to
alleviate it changes radically in Weerth’s other poem on this subject, written about
three years later. In “Die Winzer” the speaker explicitly blames an unholy trinity of
capitalist merchants, an oppressive state administration, and a false belief in divine
justice as the causes at the heart of the crisis:
6 See Marx’s series of articles “Rechtfertigung des + +-Korrespondenten von der Mosel” (15-20
January 1843) (MEGA I, 296-323). The crosses in the title refer to the symbol that Marx as the
anonymous correspondent used to sign his articles.
 269
An Ahr und Mosel glänzten
Die Trauben gelb und rot;
Die dummen Bauern meinten,
Sie wären aus jeder Not.

Da kamen die Handelsleute

Herüber aus aller Welt:
“Wir nehmen ein Drittel der Ernte
Für unser geliehenes Geld!”

Da kamen die Herren Beamten

Aus Koblenz und aus Köln:
“Das zweite Drittel gehöret
Dem Staate an Steuern und Zölln!”

Und als die Bauern flehten

Zu Gott in höchster Pein,
Da schickt er ein Hageln und Wettern
Und brüllte: “Der Rest ist mein!” (Weerth 1956 I, 195)

In “Die Winzer” a Marxist analysis of the exploitation of the winegrowers’ labour

has replaced sentimental sympathy with their plight that characterised “Der Wein
ist nicht geraten.” Unlike in the latter poem, in “Die Winzer” divine powers are
not seen as determining the proletarian fate. Instead, it is the capitalist apparatus
that deprives the peasants of the fruits of their labour, while their deluded belief
in higher powers and higher justice keeps them fulfilling their role in the capitalist
process of production and prevents them from rebelling against oppression and
exploitation. It is in this sense that the speaker terms them “die dummen Bauern,”
since they are subject to such tranquillising ideological delusions. Their trust in
merchants, authorities, and divine agency makes them tacitly submit to social in-
justice and exploitation.
One might go as far as to argue that their failure to recognise the true causes
for their misery amounts to a tragic fallacy. As in Greek tragedy, only pain and
suffering may induce a reversal of the protagonist’s delusion which results in an ac-
curate realisation of the true causes for tragic suffering: the anagnorisis. As Aristotle
defines it in the eleventh chapter of Poetics – to quote him in Manfred Fuhrmann’s
excellent German translation – this term means the “Umschlag von Unkenntnis
in Kenntnis” (chapter 11; 1994, 35) which results in the downfall of the tragic
hero. Yet unlike in Greek tragedy, in Weerth’s conception of ‘proletarian tragedy’
270

(as I prefer to call it) this recognition is regarded as the key to reversing the tragic
plot. Anagnorisis is not seen to cause the further downfall of the proletariat as the
tragic hero, but to provide the means to actively fight for its social emancipation.
As such, it marks the potential reversal from passive suffering to resistance and
socio-revolutionary action. The first step in this process is to realise that their suf-
fering is not inevitable, due a natural or divine law, but due to human agencies and
socio-political systems. As “Die Winzer” vividly illustrates, the agents that cause
the suffering and the final annihilation of the tragic protagonist are not gods but
humans from the antagonistic class in a Marxist sense, i.e. the bourgeoisie. The
laws that determine their catastrophe are not God’s will but the law of the market
and state laws. With the proletariat becoming the tragic hero, the Olympian height
of Greek tragedy, its socially elitist nature, is left behind for good, as is the notion
of the inevitability of the tragic outcome. Stronger even than in the bürgerliches
Trauerspiel, in proletarian tragedy the socioeconomic determination of the catas-
trophe is highlighted.7
This insistence on the socioeconomic roots of proletarian tragedy is found in
“Die Winzer.” While the proletarians, within the framework of the poem, do not
achieve an awareness of the socioeconomic determination of their tragic fate (let
alone the revolt against it), the reader is shown how bourgeois exploitation and the
capitalist system cause the catastrophe. The final stanza with its sententious tone
parodies any belief in the immutably tragic nature of the world and the cynical ide-
ology employed to justify exploitation of the labouring classes. At the same time,
the trust in bourgeois charity as a solution to the social crisis that the final stanza of

7 Prototypically the socioeconomic determination is shown for instance in Büchner’s fragment

of a ‘proletarian tragedy’ Woyzeck. In this drama the tragic outcome is presented as a direct
consequence of the socioeconomic position of its tragic hero. It is his social identity as a pro-
letarian that makes him subject to bourgeois exploitation and leads to a psychotic alienation
from his self. In contrast to the bürgerliche Trauerspiel as well as classical tragedy, the catas-
trophe is thought to be avoidable but only under the condition that the proletariat first gains
an accurate consciousness of its material and social being and then translates it into decisive
socio-revolutionary action. Woyzeck is unable to achieve a full consciousness of his social being
and his aggression remains misdirected. Fearing the loss of one his few remaining ‘possessions,’
Marie, he kills her. The reader, however, is left in no doubt that a revolutionary change of the
socioeconomic order is vital to end proletarian suffering and exploitation that marks the prole-
tarian tragedy in contemporary society. Nevertheless, Georg Büchner’s brother Ludwig in the
preface to the first edition of some of Georg’s posthumous works (Leonce und Lena, Lenz) tries to
subsume Woyzeck under the genre of bürgerliches Trauerspiel, when he speaks of “einem ziemlich
weit gediehenen Fragment eines bürgerlichen Trauerspiels ohne Titel” (1850, 39). To make a
convincing case for Woyzeck as the prototype of the novel genre of proletarian tragedy, it would
require a detailed investigation that is not possible within the confines of this study.
 271

Weerth’s earlier poem proclaims is mocked as complicity with a social system that is
built upon immense suffering of the majority of its members:

Viel Leid geschieht jetzunder,

Viel Leid und Hohn und Spott,
Und wen der Teufel nicht peinigt,
Den peinigt der liebe Gott! (Weerth 1956 I, 195)

The naively optimistic assertion contained in the final stanza of the earlier poem
(and extolled in the toast “‘Nur Wohl und Keinem Weh”), that the tragic prole-
tarian suffering can only by alleviated by charitable actions of the bourgeoisie, is
exposed as complicit with the system of capitalist exploitation. Such a notion – the
speaker of “Die Winzer” provocatively suggests – would mean subscribing to a
pre-Enlightenment Christian fatalism (as it is particularly evoked by the archaism
“jetztunder” reminiscent of baroque poetry) that presupposes suffering on earth
as part of a divine plan. However, such a perspective – like the bourgeois phil-
anthropic view of Christian charity – amounts to cynical mockery (“Hohn”) of
proletarian misery, as is also suggested by the rhyme “Gott” – “Spott.” Dismiss-
ing these two reactions to the social crisis as inadequate, this highly ironic state-
ment calls upon the proletariat not to submit fatalistically to its miserable living
conditions (its ‘tragic fate’ from a sympathetic bourgeois perspective) but instead
to resist actively the powers that cause them. Otherwise, the hierarchical higher
agencies, even if they mask themselves as compassionate, will always aim to de-
spoil the poor of the profits of their labour. The Christian paternalistic notion of
‘der liebe Gott’ is as much a delusion, as is the idea that the bourgeoisie will ever
put its socioeconomic class interests aside and stop exploiting the proletariat.8 The
class antagonism between bourgeoisie and proletariat, it is implied, can only be
overcome violently, by a proletarian social revolution. What the poem propagates
is that realising the universality of the proletariat’s inevitable suffering under bour-
geois capitalism and simultaneously reaching the insight that unified proletarian
resistance to the agents of this tragedy is the only way to end it. Tragic here means
that a concretely identifiable social agency, the bourgeois class, determines the fate
of the protagonist, turning the latter’s existence into a tragedy. In contrast to some
other poems by Weerth that I will examine later, this awareness is still suggested

8 Although this Christian ideology of divine mercy is also exposed as illusory in Heine’s “Die ar-
men Weber” (1844), in which the weavers utter a curse against “dem Gotte, dem blinden, dem
tauben, / Zu dem wir gebeten mit kindlichem Glauben” (Heine 1997 IV, 969), this confronta-
tion between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat is never explicitly mentioned, whereas in “Die
Winzer” “die Kaufleute” are cast as direct enemies and exploiters of the winegrowers.
272

by an apparently bourgeois speaker. Furthermore, the essentially anti-tragic act of

socio-revolutionary resistance still remains absent. Yet, the seeds for developing a
proletarian consciousness are already sown.

4.1.2 Engels, Weerth and Heß: Or the Condition and Consciousness of the
English and German Working Class

In 1845 Weerth caught up ideologically with the vanguard of German socialism

and, in addition, introduced a more sophisticated notion of the tragic into its revo-
lutionary ideology. Indeed, similar tenets are paradigmatically voiced in a speech
that Engels gave before an assembly of workers in Elberfeld in the same year.9
Like Weerth, Engels is – among other examples – reminding his audience of the
disastrous plight of the Rhine winegrowers to make the proletarians aware of the
universal nature and the universal causes of their suffering with the aim of over-
coming them in the longer term:10

Bei unserer letzten Zusammenkunft ist mir vorgeworfen worden, daß ich
meine Beispiele und Belege fast nur aus fremden Ländern, namentlich aus
England, genommen habe. [...] Betrachten wir zuerst die gegenwärtige so-
ziale Lage Deutschlands. Daß viel Armut unter uns existiert, ist bekannt.
Schlesien und Böhmen haben selbst gesprochen.11 Von der Armut der Mo-
sel- und Eifelgegenden wußte die “Rheinische Zeitung” viel zu erzählen.
Im Erzgebirge herrscht seit undenklicher Zeit fortwährendes großes Elend.
Nicht besser sieht es in der Senne und den westfälischen Leinendistrikten
aus. Von allen Gegenden Deutschlands her wird geklagt, und es ist auch
nicht anders zu erwarten. Unser Proletariat ist zahlreich und muß es sein,
wie wir bei der oberflächlichsten Betrachtung unserer sozialen Lage einse-
hen müssen. […] Unter allen Umständen muß das Proletariat nicht nur
fortexistieren, sondern auch sich fortwährend ausdehnen, eine immer dro-

9 These two speeches were given on 8 and 15 February 1845 respectively and printed in the first
volume of the Rheinische Jahrbücher (1845). Weerth’s article on “Proletarier in England,” which
I will discuss later, appeared in the same journal in the same year in August.
10 Moses Heß’ journal Gesellschaftsspiegel (1845-1846), to which Weerth contributed several po-
ems and articles, also aimed “eine getreue Schilderung der gesellschaftlichen Zustände aller civi-
lisirten Länder [zu] eröffnen” in order to alleviate “den Mangel an Einsicht” among the German
lower classes regarding their condition (cf. Heß 1971 I, 1).
11 Engels is referring here to the Silesian Weavers’ Revolt of 1844 and rebellions in the Bohemian
industrial districts in the same year.
 273
hendere Macht in unserer Gesellschaft werden, solange wir fortfahren, jeder
auf seine eigne Faust und im Gegensatz zu allen anderen zu produzieren.
Das Proletariat wird aber einmal eine Stufe der Macht und Einsicht errei-
chen, bei der es sich den Druck des ganzen sozialen Gebäudes, das fortwäh-
rend auf seinen Schultern ruht, nicht mehr wird gefallen lassen, wo es eine
gleichmäßigere Verteilung der sozialen Lasten und Rechte verlangen wird;
und dann wird – wenn sich die menschliche Natur bis dahin nicht ändert –
eine soziale Revolution nicht zu vermeiden sein. (MEW II, 549 & 550)

Apart from aiming to engender a universal proletarian consciousness, Engels also

tries to sketch a decidedly anti-tragic outline for the further development of the
proletariat. As he asserts, it follows as a necessary consequence that further advanc-
es of capitalism will increase proletarianisation and thus also the amount of prole-
tarian suffering. To use Engels’ image, the weight of the entire social structure that
the proletariat has to carry on its shoulders will increase further. Yet, this growth
in numbers means also an increase in power. When the proletariat reaches the
“Stufe an Einsicht” at which it will become aware of how its exploitation is bound
up with capitalism, this will open up the opportunity for a reversal of the tragic
plot. At this stage, Engels seems convinced that the proletariat will also realise its
power and subsequently move towards socio-revolutionary action. Thus, it will
mark the turning point of the drama’s plot at which its proletarian protagonist will
no longer accept his fate as immutable, as tragic, but revolt against this notion by
staging “eine soziale Revolution.” As in Greek drama anagnorisis causes peripeteia, a
reversal in fortune. However, unlike in Greek tragedy, this reversal in fortune does
not lead towards catastrophe but rather towards tragedy’s solution.
Moreover, (as pointed out) in contrast to the Greek model, ‘tragic’ material and
spiritual suffering is revealed as being caused not by higher powers but directly by
the existing socioeconomic system. ‘Tragic’ is closely connected to the existing sys-
tem of class domination and exploitation. The same desperate “soziale Lage” will
necessarily exist, as long as the “soziale Ordnung” of bourgeois capitalism prevails,
as Engels emphasises in the preface to Die Lage der arbeitenden Klasse in England
(1845):

Und wenn auch die proletarischen Zustände Deutschlands nicht zu der

Klassizität ausgebildet sind wie die englischen, so haben wir doch im Grun-
de dieselbe soziale Ordnung [...]. Dieselben Grundursachen, welche in Eng-
land das Elend und die Unterdrückung des Proletariats bewirkt haben, sind
in Deutschland ebenfalls vorhanden und müssen auf die Dauer dieselben
Resultate erzeugen. (MEW II, 233)
274

In Engels’ opinion, this insight into the universality and ubiquity of proletarian
misery under capitalism is vital to reach an accurate awareness of its social roots. It
is not only in England that the proletariat suffers, but also in Germany and any-
where across the world where capitalism reigns: a point also indirectly conveyed
by “Die Winzer” which – while written in England – engages with the misery and
exploitation of the German proletarians.
More clearly than in this poem, however, Weerth highlights this international
dimension of proletarian suffering in the article “Die Armen in der Senne” (De-
cember 1844). It depicts the social conditions in a remote region close to Weerth’s
birthplace Detmold, the Senne, (which Engels also mentions in the excerpt from
his second speech quoted above) that was notorious for rural poverty. Harrowingly
depicting the extent of deprivation and desperation of the rural poor in this area,
Weerth – like Engels in his speech – asserts in the final paragraph that these exam-
ples show the universality of the tragedy of proletarian destitution and misery in
contemporary society. Not merely in slums of Bradford, but also in Germany, close
to Weerth’s birthplace the proletariat greatly suffers, and the veil of sentimentality
(entailed in the expression “aus der lieben Heimat”) only insufficiently covers this
brutal fact:

Wir schreiben dies in einer Fabrikstadt Englands, in einem echt chartisti-

schen Loch, in dem Armut und Unheil zu Hause ist; man hat uns manche
Sachen erzählt, die das Herz beben machen können, aber Geschichten, wie
die erzählte aus der lieben Heimat, sind doch auch des Schauderns wert.
(Weerth 1956 II, 54; Weerth’s emphasis)

Here the tragic dimension of the proletarian fate is emphasised. The strong emo-
tion “des Schauderns” that the spectator experiences in witnessing the tragic suf-
fering of the proletariat corresponds with the “Jammer und Schaudern” that the
spectator of Greek tragedy experiences in the face of anagnorisis and peripeteia (cf.
chapter 11; Aristotle 1994, 35). However, Weerth here at the same time points
to a way of reversing one’s fortune, a radical twist of plot (the meaning of the
term peripeteia). When he colloquially speaks of Bradford as “einem echt chartis-
tischen Loch,” the home of poverty, tragic disaster, and calamity (“Unheil”), he
suggests that the organisation and unification of the proletariat presents the only
way to overcome its misery. For Weerth, thus the Chartist mass movement pro-
vides great promise in the proletariat’s fight for political and social emancipation.12
12 Weerth was particularly intrigued by the most radical fringe of the Chartist movement, the so-
called ‘physical force’ Chartists. It was mostly with those Chartist leaders that leaned towards
socio-revolutionary change that Weerth was acquainted with, most notably George Julian Har-
 275

Both for Engels and Weerth, the first step leading to proletarian social revolution
is a reversal of proletarian ignorance of its social condition: a development that
the poems Weerth wrote in England chart and enact. The moment that insight
into the proletarian social being replaces ignorance constitutes the beginning of
peripeteia in Weerth’s socialist poetics of revolution. It marks the first step in the
positive reversal of proletarian misery, “einen Umschlag vom Unglück ins Glück”
as Aristotle defines it in chapter 7 of his Poetics (1994, 27). This nexus between an
increasing proletarian consciousness both of its social being and its revolutionary
powers (and the subsequent move towards socio-revolutionary action) underpins
the vast majority of the poems that Weerth wrote during his time in England. As
Fumio Takaki comments, the characters in these poems, “sind […] sich im unter-
schiedlichen Maß der Ursachen der Unterdrückung und der Not bewußt” and “ihr
Bewußtsein wird langsam von Gedicht zu Gedicht klarer” (1993, 76).
This emphasis on inducing a concrete proletarian awareness of its material liv-
ing conditions should be regarded as being part of a wider paradigmatic shift in
German socialism that was taking place throughout the second half of the 1840s:
“das Umdenken eines Teils der sozialistischen Intelligenz” (Weber 1983, 269) from
mainly abstract and theoretical (i.e. philosophical and socioeconomic) models of
social revolution, as for instance Marx developed in his 1844 writings, to a posi-
tion that took the concrete living circumstances and the class consciousness that
will arise from the struggles of the European proletarians as its basis. Instead of
theory, the emphasis was now on “Basisarbeit mit der Vermittlung gesellschaftli-
cher Fakten, um das für revolutionäre Veränderungen notwendige Bewußtsein zu
schaffen” (Weber 1983, 269): a project in which Weerth, with his poems and
articles, prominently participated. Arguably the most famous example of this new
approach constitutes Engels’ Lage der arbeitenden Klasse in England (1845), which,
with its compendium of statistics, reports, and case studies, aims to induce a socio-
revolutionary proletarian awareness. In the preface to his study, Engels self-criti-
cally reflects on his turn from theory to practice and emphasises the latter’s pivotal
importance for the further development of German Communism. According to
him, a concrete and authentic consciousness of the proletariat’s socioeconomic
status forms the precondition for any further advances in socialism. This idea runs
ney (see for instance Füllner 2006, 43, 52, 59). Uwe Zemke claims that “Weerth während seines
England-Aufenthaltes als engagierter Sozialist und Anhänger der ‘physical force Chartists’, des
linken, Gewalt predigenden Flügels der Chartisten-Bewegung auftrat” (1993, 115). Although
Weerth even wrote a “Geschichte der Chartisten von 1832 bis 1848”, his stance towards this
largest contemporary working-class movement remains surprisingly little researched. In this
context it is also important to mention that in 1846 Weerth translated a Chartist manifesto into
German for Heß’ Gesellschaftsspiegel (see Heß 1971 II, 37-39).
276

counter to the theoretical critique of German idealism, as Marx had undertak-

en for example in the “Einleitung Zur Kritik der Hegel’schen Rechts-Philosophie”
(1844) and, will, together with Engels, in Die deutsche Ideologie:

Der deutsche Sozialismus und Kommunismus ist mehr als jeder andre von
theoretischen Voraussetzungen ausgegangen; wir deutschen Theoretiker
kannten von der wirklichen Welt noch viel zu wenig, als das uns die wirk-
lichen Verhältnisse unmittelbar zur Reformen dieser “schlechten Wirklich-
keit” hätte treiben sollen. Von den öffentlichen Vertretern solcher Reformen
ist fast kein einziger anders als durch die Feuerbachsche Auflösung der He-
gelschen Spekulation zum Kommunismus gekommen. Die wirklichen Le-
bensumstände des Proletariats sind so wenig gekannt unter uns, daß selbst
die wohlmeinenden “Vereine zur Hebung der arbeitenden Klassen”, in de-
nen jetzt unsre Bourgeoisie die soziale Frage mißhandelt, fortwährend von
den lächerlichsten und abgeschmacktesten Meinungen über die Lage der
Arbeiter ausgehen. Uns Deutschen vor allen tut eine Kenntnis der Tatsachen
in dieser Frage not. […] Einstweilen wird aber das konstatierte englische
Elend uns einen Anlaß bieten, auch unser deutsches Elend zu konstatieren,
und einen Maßstab, woran wir seine Ausdehnung und die Größe – der in
den schlesischen und böhmischen Unruhen zutage gekommenen Gefahr
messen können, welche von dieser Seite der unmittelbaren Ruhe Deutsch-
lands droht. (MEW II, 233; Engels’ emphasis)

While deliberately downplaying his socio-revolutionary agenda – not least to pass

the German censorship – Engels here underlines the pan-European dimension that
he recognises both in the tragic suffering of the proletariat and in the perceived
resolution of this crisis. The “Ausdehnung und Größe” of pan-European proletar-
ian misery will eventually lead to the Europe-wide proletarian social revolution.
The Silesian Weavers’ Revolt and the Bohemian Workers’ Rebellion in 1844 were
preludes to this great world-historic and sublime drama that will “dem ganzen so-
zialen System eine neue Basis geben” (MEW II, 233) rather any bourgeois idealist
attempts at social reform. However, to accelerate the revolutionary crisis in Ger-
many, Engels insists that an accurate awareness of the more advanced British in-
dustrial capitalism, with its more extreme proletarianisation, is necessary to reflect
upon the situation in Germany. As he insists, “[f ]ür Deutschland insbesondere hat
die Darstellung der klassischen Proletariatszustände des britischen Reichs – und
namentlich im gegenwärtigen Augenblick – große Bedeutung” MEW II, 233).
Almost as if through a magical mirror, Germany’s future can be predicted by de-
picting England’s present.
 277

Such an interaction between the discourse on the English working class and its
implication for the awakening German proletarian consciousness lies also at the
heart of Weerth’s texts, including his poems, about English proletarians. Immedi-
ately recognising the seminal importance of Engels’ book for the further advance
of the German socialist revolutionary agenda, Weerth implicitly engages with it in
his own accounts of English proletarians and humbly measures them up against
Engels’ study.13 As Engels does in his preface to Die Lage der arbeitenden Klasse in
England, Weerth, in his article “Proletarier in England” (August 1845), also stresses
the importance of gaining an accurate consciousness of the proletarian condition
as well as the crucial role that the German reflection upon the English situation
plays in this endeavour:

Ich schließe hiermit diesen mangelhaften Bericht über Proletarier in Eng-

land und freue mich nur, daß in diesem Augenblick eine der besten philo-
sophischen Federn in Deutschland damit beschäftigt ist, eine umfassende
Darstellung des Lebens englischer Arbeiter zu schreiben; ein Werk, welches
von unberechenbarer Wichtigkeit sein wird. Jedenfalls versteht jener Schrift-
steller besser, wie ich, die einzelnen Sachen in ihr rechtes Licht zu stellen,
und hat durch langen Aufenthalt in Manchester, der Wiege des Proletariats,
mehr Gelegenheit gehabt, den Arbeiter zu beobachten, als ich in Gesell-
schaft meines edlen Freundes, des Doctor Mac … (Weerth 1845, 326)

Despite his self-deprecating remarks, Weerth’s contribution to the project of rais-

ing the German proletarian social self-awareness must not be underestimated in
the face of the towering figures of Marx and Engels. The same applies to another
instigator among the German Communists of this paradigm shift towards a con-
crete consciousness of the proletarian condition: Moses Heß. With his Gesells-

13 Critics have occasionally remarked on parallels and differences between Weerth’s articles on
the English workers and working-class movements and Engels’ study (e.g. Köster-Bunselmayer
1981, 120-133, Köster 1993, 93-99, Zemke 1988, 164-165, Vaßen 1988, 69 and Claeys 1985,
464-465). Doris Köster-Bunselmayer’s relatively detailed comparison (and to a lesser degree also
Uwe Köster’s assertions which draw heavily upon her argument) suffers considerably from her
desire to – inaccurately – represent Weerth as a social reformer rather than as a social revolution-
ary. While the scope of this study does not permit me to investigate the links between Weerth’s
and Engels’ writings about the English proletariat, it is worth pointing out that there exists some
direct overlap between these. For instance, Weerth’s poem “Die hundert Männer von Haswell”
(first published in the Gesellschaftsspiegel in 1845 and republished in 1846 in Püttmann’s Album
under the title “Die hundert Bergleute”) refers to a mining disaster that Engels’ also engages
with in Die Lage (see MEW II, 462-463). A systematic study comparing Weerth’s and En-
gels’ depiction of the condition of the English working classes remains an urgent task for both
Weerth and Engels as well as for wider Marxist scholarship.
278

chaftsspiegel: Organ zur Vertretung der besitzlosen Volksklasssen und zur Beleuchtung
der gesellschaftlichen Zustände der Gegenwart (1845-1846), he became one of the
most dedicated proponents of such a conscious exercise. Its programmatic subtitle
underlines the fact that this journal aimed not only to represent the proletariat,
but also to illuminate its position within the contemporary socioeconomic system
of bourgeois capitalism. Managing to reach a wide audience among the workers, it
tried to make the proletariat aware of its necessarily tragic situation in this system
and to engender a socio-revolutionary consciousness.14
Weerth’s texts about English proletarians are an integral part of this strategy
to engender a revolution in proletarian consciousness by depicting as exemplars
the fate of individual members of this class. As he stresses in his praise of Engels
Lage in his article “Proletarier in England,” the goal for the Germans must be “den
Arbeiter zu beobachten” in the English industrial cities, “der Wiege des Proletari-
ats.” For this reason, Engels’ study is crucial. For Weerth and his fellow German
communists, the English proletariat paradigmatically expresses the suffering and
struggles of this new social class that has been emerging all across Europe. These
shared intentions of Heß’ and Weerth’s writings demonstrate that it is no coinci-
dence that at least three of Weerth’s articles about England15 and four of Weerth’s
poems about the English proletariat (“Es war ein armer Schneider,” “Die hundert
Männer von Haswell,” “Der alte Wirth in Lancashire,” and “Der Kanonengießer”
under the heading Lieder aus Lancashire) were published in Heß’ Gesellschaftsspiegel
in 1845 (see Heß 1971 I, 63-65 & 196-197).
Both Weerth and Heß subscribe to a similar conception of proletarian tragedy
in which proletarian suffering can only be reversed by anagnorisis. The realisa-
tion by the proletariat of its authentic social being must replace the widespread
“Mangel an Einsicht” (cf. Heß 1971 I, 1) among it, if the social crisis is ever to

14 As Ernst Weber points out: “Durch ungeschminkte Berichte von Armut, Hunger, Unterdrück-
ung und Verwahrlosung sollte den Arbeitern ihr kollektives Schicksal zu Bewußtsein gebracht
werden. Erst das Wissen von der Allgemeinheit des Einzelschicksals schuf, nach Hess, die Bed-
ingungen für den notwendigen Klassenkampf ” (1983, 269).
15 These are “Die Wohlthaten des Herzogs von Marlborough” published as “Nachrichten und
Notizen aus Bradford, Yorkshire, im Februar” (Vol. I/No. 1) (see Heß 1971 I, 17-19), “Das
Blumen-Fest der englischen Arbeiter” (Vol. I/No. 5) (see Heß 1971 I, 180-187), “Der Gesund-
heitszustand der Arbeiter in Bradford, Yorkshire, England” (Vol. I/No. 5) (see Heß 1971 I, 163-
167) and “Manifest der Chartisten” (Vol. I/No. 9) (see Heß 1971 II, 37-39). In the edition of
Weerth’s works currently in preparation, Bernd Füllner further includes a short article from the
Gesellschaftsspiegel “Allmälig steuern wir auf eine lustige Krise zu” (Vol. I/No. 11) (see Heß 1971
II, 70), which is most likely an excerpt from a, since lost, letter that Weerth sent to Heß.
 279

be overcome. As Heß programmatically states in the editorial to its first issue, the
Gesellschaftsspiegel will aim to contribute to the growth of such a decisive insight:

Um die Mittel aufzufinden und anzuwenden, welche die vielfach verzweig-

ten und obendrein noch künstlich verhüllten Uebelstände unseres socialen
Lebens gründlich und nachhaltig beseitigen sollen, ist es vor allen Dingen
nöthig, diese Uebelstände selbst kennen zu lernen. Der “Gesellschaftsspie-
gel” wird daher alle Krankheiten des gesellschaftlichen Körpers vor sein Fo-
rum ziehen; er wird allgemeine Schilderungen, Monographien, statistische
Notizen und einzelne charakteristische Fälle veröffentlichen, welche geeig-
net sind, die socialen Verhältnisse aller Klassen in ihr rechtes Licht zu stellen
[...] Die Lage der arbeitenden Klassen wird uns vor Allem beschäftigen, da
sie von allen Uebeln der heutigen civilisirten Gesellschaft das schreiendste
ist. (Heß 1971 I, n. p.; Heß’ emphasis)

The social body (as opposed to the traditional image of the body politic) is sick
and the most pressing ill it suffers is the state of the working class, Heß asserts in
what seems an allusion to Engels’ book that appeared in the same year. As the im-
agery of enlightening, exposing, and illuminating shows, Heß regarded the clear
consciousness of the ills of society as the crucial step in a mental process that would
eventually reverse tragic suffering. In pursuit of this aim he not only deems empiri-
cal and factual evidence and nonfictional accounts vital, but also fictional texts, if
they faithfully recreate proletarian existence:

Der “Gesellschaftsspiegel” wird nicht allein das materielle Elend, oder das
geistige und moralische Elend etwa nur da schildern, wo es mit jenem Hand
in Hand geht [...] und er wird sich in seiner Darstellung nicht allein auf
statistische Notizen und wirkliche Historien aus dem Leben beschränken,
er wird auch Dichtungen in Prosa und in Versen, aber nur solchen, die das
Leben getreu schildern, seine Spalten öffnen. Schilderungen nach dem Le-
ben werden ihm nicht minder willkommen sein, als Schilderungen aus dem
Leben. (Heß 1971 I, n. p.; Heß’ emphasis)

In calling for a new kind of socialist literature, Heß here directly harks back to the
notion of mimesis in tragedy, as Aristotle understands it in the Poetics, and adapts it
for his purposes. Similarly, Aristotle asserts that “Tragödie ist nicht Nachahmung
von Menschen, sondern von Handlung und Lebenswirklichkeit” (cf. 1994, 21;
chapter 6).
280

4.1.3 “Und wußte nicht warum”: The Tragic Lack of Social Consciousness in
Weerth’s “Es war ein armer Schneider” (1845)

Aristotelian poetic concepts such as mimesis also apply very strongly to Weerth’s
poems about the English proletariat. Their emphasis is not on the characters as
imitations of real existing proletarians, but “als Schilderungen nach dem Leben,”
as Heß stipulates. They aim to depict, within their fictional literary form, both the
proletarian living conditions and the proletarian actions in a mimetic fashion that
reveals the socioeconomic laws that determine proletarian life. However, in con-
trast to Greek tragedy, the proletariat’s fate is not shown as invariably tragic. Unlike
the classic tragedy of fate, the proletarian social tragedy can be ended. Gaining an
authentic class consciousness and moving onwards to socio-revolutionary action
are pivotal steps in this process of achieving an anti-tragic resolution.16 As the
publication in journals such as the Gesellschaftsspiegel that addressed a working-
class audience suggests, Weerth’s poems function as an important contribution to
this end. To deny this pivotal didactic and socio-political function of these poems,
as Ernst Weber does when he claims that Weerth did not assign any “politischen
Wert” to them (cf. 1983, 272),17 is to belittle Weerth’s educational and revolution-
ary ambitions that he – as much as Heß – vehemently pursued in his writing.
Ironically, the very poem that Weber analyses, “Es war ein armer Schneider”
(published in the Gesellschaftsspiegel in 1845) disproves his point. The ballad deals
with the suicide of a tailor who is neither aware of the reasons for his suffering nor
of the motives for taking his life. The contemporary reader is led to deduce that
the tailor’s death is related to the increasing pauperisation of the traditional artisan

16 Without making the connection to the tradition of poetics, Hans-Georg Werner similarly em-
phasises that Weerth in his poems “macht in der Darstellung von Real-Gegenwärtigem die
revolutionäre Perspektive sichtbar”: a poetic strategy that sets them apart “von den meisten
revolutionären Gedichten – auch denen proletarischen Charakters – anderer Schriftsteller des
Vormärz” (1974, 62).
17 Identifying an alleged contradiction between Weerth’s “sozialem bzw. politischem Engagement
und weitgehendem Publikationsverzicht” as far as his poems are concerned, Weber argues that
this proves that Weerth did not assign a high “literarischen Wert” to them, or indeed any politi-
cal worth (cf. 1983, 272). The absurdity of Weber’s claim becomes evident when one considers
the large number of socio-political poems (over 30, not counting the repeated publication of
some poems) that Weerth published between 1845 and 1848. Weerth stressed his socio-revo-
lutionary intentions even further by exclusively printing them in socialist publications, such as
Heß’ Gesellschaftsspiegel, Hermann Püttmann’s Bürgerbuch, Rheinische Jahrbücher, and Album,
the Communist Deutsche-Brüsseler Zeitung, and Marx’s Neue Rheinische Zeitung.
 281

trades, both in Germany and in England.18 The poem focuses on the dialectics
of unconsciousness and consciousness of the proletariat regarding its social be-
ing, condition, and status. The line that is repeated four times, “Und wußte nicht
warum,” functions as the poem’s chorus and strongly foregrounds the crucial im-
portance of the tailor’s ignorance of his tragic fate. His ignorance, however, must
not be equated with stupidity. On the contrary, it is due to his incessant toil. It is
determined by the nature of his alienated labour that in turn alienates him from
his self, as the first stanza emphasises:

Es war ein armer Schneider

Der nähte sich krumm und dumm;
Er nähte dreißig Jahre lang
Und wußte nicht warum. (Weerth 1971, 63)

The tailor’s entire being amounts to nothing more than his crippling, repetitive,
and stultifying work. His alienated labour determines not only his physical but
also his mental decline, as the second line with its internal rhyme “krumm und
dumm” also linguistically foregrounds. His lack of consciousness then becomes
not a simple failing, but a tragic flaw. With circumstances beyond his immediate
control, his need to survive in an increasingly competitive environment is to blame
for his physical and mental degeneration, as well as for the unconsciousness of his
social being.
However, as the poem progresses, one begins to wonder whether the tailor’s
awareness of his situation is indeed utterly deficient? Although he does not ex-
press it in words or thoughts, the tailor displays through his actions a rudimentary
consciousness of his situation, of the reasons that drive him to suicide. When the
actual suicide is described in Stanza 3 and 4, the way he kills himself acquires a
highly symbolic meaning:
18 As Weber points out, unemployment of the German craftsmen, due the increasing industrialisa-
tion, was disastrous and led to a high rate of suicides among them. The trade of tailor was par-
ticularly badly hit by this crisis (See 1983, 267-268). For the precarious situation of the majority
of the tailors in Germany, see also Lenger 1988, 53-55. For a comprehensive study of this crisis
of the German artisan trade between 1845 and 1849, see Bergmann 1986. He demonstrates
that this structural crisis was one of the major factors in triggering the German Revolution and
that the social demands of the unemployed and pauperised craftsmen considerably shaped the
face of the Revolution.
Although industrialisation was already far more advanced in Britain, the impact on the tradi-
tional trades still continued to be felt. According to Eric Hobsbawm, most strongly affected
were the “declining industries and occupations, displaced by technical progress.” The members
of these professions “starved progressively in a vain attempt to compete with the new machines
by working more and more cheaply” (1999, 71).
282
Und nahm die blanken Nadeln
Und nahm die Scheere krumm –
Zerbrach so Scheer’ und Nadel
Und wußte nicht warum.

Und schlang viel starke Fäden

Um seinen Hals herum;
Und hat am Balken sich erhängt19
Und wußte nicht warum. (Weerth 1971, 63)

In spite of his general ignorance, the tailor seems to harbour a dark notion that
his trade is doomed due to the advances of capitalism, when in a symbolic act he
breaks his scissors and needles, the tools of his trade, before he commits suicide.
The way he kills himself, using many strong threads – basic tools of his profes-
sion – to make a rope to hang himself, is further proof of his semiconsciousness.
These consciously symbolic gestures profoundly question the validity of Weber’s
verdict that the tailor’s “Verblödung” is already so advanced that he is “sich selbst
entfremdet” (cf. 1983, 267) to the extent that he lacks any understanding of his
situation. By contrast, I would even go as far as to argue that his suicide represents
a form of protest, however impotent and ineffective, against his dehumanisation
at the hands of the bourgeois socioeconomic system. As such, his personal tragedy
epitomises the wider proletarian tragedy. As Weerth insists in the article on English
proletarians, the widespread reports about suicides, child murders and other kill-
ings among the poor in the English papers show the extent of this social “Drama”
(Weerth 1845, 319). Although the bourgeois narrating voice of the poem tries to
distract from this disconcerting fact through a pseudo-harmonious ending – the
tailor is made to die against the backdrop of a mock-romantic evening setting –

19 It is conceivable that Weerth might be referring here to a contemporary popular broadsheet

ballad, “The State of Great Britain or a Touch at the Times,” that suggests that suicides are com-
mon due to the socioeconomic situation. Similar to Weerth’s ballad, it exposes the decline and
the pauperisation of the traditional trades through the increasing industrialisation. In contrast,
however, to Weerth’s poem, the immediate reason for the impending suicide is mentioned: “The
railroads all through England have great depression made; / Machines of every kind has [sic] put
a stop to trade; / The innkeepers are weeping, in agony and grief, / And the ostlers swear they’ll
buy a rope and go to felo-de-se” (Quoted in Palmer 1974, 88). One might argue that the suicide
Weerth’s tailor, who in Stanza 2 also “fing […] wohl zu weinen an” (1971, 63) in grief over his
socioeconomic situation, forms a much more far-reaching indictment of the human cost of
industrial capitalism than the potential one of the innkeepers in the ballad. It singles out one
development, the building of the railroads, as the reason for this human catastrophe, whereas
Weerth, by withholding the concrete reason for the tailor’s suicide, achieves a much more com-
prehensive indictment of capitalism.
 283

Weerth’s implicit irony sharply exposes the hypocrisy that is involved in the falsely
romantic reconciliation with nature in death:

Er wußte nicht – es tönte

Der Abendglocken Gesumm.
Der Schneider starb um halber acht
Und Niemand weiß warum. (Weerth 1971, 63)

The aposiopesis in the first line of this final stanza hints that the tailor might even
have had a full anagnorisis in his final moments, an insight that the poem’s speaker
is all too willing to bury under false sentimentality. Yet, when the last line provoca-
tively states that “Niemand weiß warum” (a variation on the chorus “Und wußte
nicht warum”), then the onus is placed on the reader. While the speaker tries to
cut short any further inquiry through his falsely idyllic and sentimental depiction
of the tailor’s death, the reader is urged to continue searching for the causes for the
suicide. In lieu of the tailor and speaker, the reader is urged to become conscious
of the underlying reasons for the tailor killing himself.
Of course, the ending is also an ironic stab at the false sentiment of contempo-
rary bourgeois social poetry (including that of the ‘wahren Sozialisten’). The crucial
importance of this hidden attack against the hypocritical sentimental sympathy of
the bourgeoisie with the proletariat becomes even more evident when one consid-
ers how the exposure of this tendency formed part of the mission of the Gesell-
schaftsspiegel, in which Weerth’s poem was published. As Heß sarcastically asserts
in the editorial to its first issue, idealising bourgeois sympathy for the proletariat
will never lead to any genuine improvement of the latter’s social condition. On the
contrary, it is highly hypocritical since its main purpose is to disguise the quotid-
ian bourgeois indifference towards proletarian misery that only temporarily abates
when proletarian unrest threatens society:

Solche idealisirende Sentimentalität trägt wohl heuchlerisch ihre Theil-

nahme an den Leiden der Menschheit zur Schau, wenn dieselben einmal
zum politischen Scandal geworden sind, – wie wir bei Gelegenheit der schle-
sischen Unruhen plötzlich alle Zeitungen und Zeitschriften von sogenann-
tem Socialismus überströmen sahen – sobald aber die Unruhen aufhören,
läßt man die armen Leute wieder ruhig verhungern. (Heß 1971 I, n. p;
Heß’ emphasis)

I would suggest that “Es war ein armer Schneider” (as well as several other poems
of Weerth’s) forms a direct riposte to the sentimentalising and idealising depic-
284

tion of proletarian misery that characterised the majority of contemporary socially

critical poetry. With his poem about the poor tailor, Weerth might in particular
relate back to Thomas Hood’s popular social ballad The Song of the Shirt.20 First
published in the Christmas 1843 issue of the satirical journal Punch,21 it unmasks
in a melodramatic fashion the exploitation of the seamstresses. While it vividly
depicts the destitution and socioeconomic violence inherent in the seamstress’ ex-
ploited labour, it does not call for a development of a proletarian consciousness, as
Weerth’s poem does. Instead, it appeals to the sympathies and the compassion of
the bourgeois readers, as the last stanza proves, when the speaker exclaims: “Would
that its tone could reach the Rich!” When Engels ironically comments on Hood’s
poem in Die Lage der arbeitenden Klasse in England, which in his words “man-
che, mitleidige, aber nutzlose Träne den Augen der Bourgeoisietöchter entlockte”
(MEW II, 428), he regards this appeal as the poem’s greatest ideological shortcom-
ing:

“Work – work – work!

From weary chime to chime,
Work –work – work –
As prisoners work for a crime!
Band, and gusset, and seam,
Seam, and gusset, and band,
Till the heart is sick, and the brain benumb’d
As well as the weary hand.

[…]

With fingers weary and worn,

With eyelids heavy and red,
A woman sat in unwomanly rags,
Plying her needle and thread –
Stitch! stitch! stitch!

20 Weerth was not the only German poet to engage with Hood’s ballad. In 1847 Ferdinand
Freiligrath translated it into German under the title “Das Lied vom Hemde: Nach Thomas
Hood” (see Freiligrath 1973a, 89-92).
21 Weerth was an avid reader of this journal and refers to it regularly throughout his works, for in-
stance in the article “Punch, Harlequin und Henneschen” (Neue Rheinische Zeitung, No. 182/30
December 1848), which attacks the increasing middle-class tendency of this publication. The
article “Die Wohlthaten des Herzogs von Marlborough” (first published under the title “Nach-
richten und Notizen aus Bradford, Yorkshire, im Februar” in Gesellschaftsspiegel (1), May 1845)
is even directly based on an article in Punch.
 285
In poverty, hunger and dirt,
And still with a voice of dolorous pitch,
Would that its tone could reach the Rich!
She sang this “Song of the Shirt”! (Hood 2000, 64 & 65)

Weerth, in contrast to Hood, not only precludes such an appeal to bourgeois sym-
pathy but also exposes the hollowness of such a move that substitutes proletarian
tragedy with melodrama, attacking such a strategy head on. I would suggest that
the pseudo-idyllic ending of “Es war ein armer Schneider” directly exposes the il-
lusory nature of the idyll that the seamstress conjures up to escape her grim living
and working conditions. Instead of having to work “From weary chime to chime”
(a sharp contrast to the melodious “Abendglocken Gesumm” in the last stanza of
Weerth’s poem), she longs “For only one short hour” of relief from her unrelenting
workload in an idealised rural surrounding: a longing which – as she herself half
admits – would provide absolutely no solution to her state:

“Oh! but to breathe the breath

Of the cowslip and the primrose sweet –
With the sky above my head,
And the grass beneath my feet,
For only one short hour
To feel as I used to feel,
Before I knew the woes of want
And the walk that costs a meal!

“O but for one short hour!

A respite however brief!
No blessed leisure for Love or Hope,
But only time for Grief!
A little weeping would ease my heart,
But in their briny bed
My tears must stop, for every drop
Hinders needle and thread!” (Hood 2001, 64-65)

What Weerth deliberately eschews in his poetic depictions of proletarian tragedy

are such sentimental palliative moments that imply that there might be other solu-
tions to resolve the tragedy apart from proletarian social revolution (which Weerth
had embraced by then). In contrast to Hood’s seamstress who has to refrain from
crying, as it will keep her from working, Weerth’s tailor starts weeping shortly
before he begins the preparations to hang himself. After another week of monoto-
286

nous toil, we are told in the poem’s second stanza, “Da fing er wohl zu weinen
an / Und wußte nicht warum” (1971, 63). As these two lines strongly suggest,
for Weerth, grief alone constitutes an impotent palliative for proletarian misery.
Crying without knowing the reasons does not lead to an increased awareness of
the social being nor does it offer a way out of the suffering. Unlike in Hood’s case,
Weerth’s readers are further directed not to succumb to the emotions evoked by
the sentimental description of proletarian suffering. Weerth’s use of the epic device
of showing rather than telling, urges his reader to think about his character’s fate
rather than to merely commiserate with it, as Hood does.
In his poems about proletarians after 1845, Weerth ruthlessly reveals the extent
of proletarian misery while at the same time precluding the possibility of a purely
emotionally sympathetic response among his readers. This process aims to induce
a socio-revolutionary consciousness in the reader. However, to achieve this, it is
necessary first to become fully conscious of the extent of proletarian exploitation
and alienation, a revolutionary dialectic that Heß programmatically outlines in the
editorial to the Gesellschaftsspiegel and that Weerth enacts in his poems about the
proletariat:

Wem eine so schonungslose Enthüllung der bisher größtentheils gleißne-

risch übertünchten oder verhüllten Zustände unserer industriellen sowohl
wie ackerbauenden und übrigen Bevölkerung – wem eine so offene Dar-
legung unseres ganzen gesellschaftlichen Zustandes, wie sie der “Gesell-
schaftsspiegel” zu geben beabsichtiget, etwa zu viel Kopf- und Herzweh
macht, um sich mit diesem Unternehmen zu befreunden, der mag beden-
ken, daß der Muth, der dazu gehört, einem Uebel in’s Antlitz zu schauen,
und die Beruhigung, welche aus einer klaren Erkenntnis entspringt, am
Ende doch noch wohlthätiger auf Geist und Gemüth wirkt, als die feige
Sentimentalität, welche in der Lüge ihres Ideals, – das weder existirt noch
existiren kann, weil es auf Illusionen gebaut ist – Trost sucht, Angesichts einer
trostlosen Wirklichkeit! (Heß 1971 I, n.p.; Heß’ emphasis).

In their critique of social sentimentality, both Heß and Weerth attempt to achieve
a similar disillusioning and sobering effect, as Marx does with his critique of reli-
gion as an opiate of the people. For Marx to transcend religion, “der Seufzer der
bedrängten Kreatur,” at once obliges the people to abandon any “Illusion über sein-
en Zustand” and to alter “einen Zustand […], der der Illusionen bedarf (MEGA II,
171; Marx’s emphasis). All three believe that to change the contemporary world by
revolution, it is thus first necessary for the masses to gain an authentic conscious-
ness of their tragic social conditions, “des ganzen gesellschaftlichen Zustandes.”
 287

Weerth believes as much as Heß that only such an anagnorisis, this “Erkenntnis,”
will lead to a manifestation of proletarian socio-revolutionary spirit. This becomes
evident in some of Weerth’s other poems about the proletariat, one of which, “Der
alte Wirth in Lancashire,” I will discuss next.

4.1.4 Anagnorisis, Catharsis, Peripeteia in the Proletarian Revolutionary

Drama

Discussing the structure of tragedy, Aristotle in the Poetics posits that ideally an-
agnorisis, the shift from unawareness to awareness, and peripeteia, the reversal of
fortune and turning point of the action, should happen simultaneously:

Die Wiedererkennung [anagnorisis] ist, wie schon die Bezeichnung andeu-

tet, ein Umschlag von Unkenntnis in Kenntnis, mit der Folge, daß Freund-
schaft oder Feindschaft eintritt, je nachdem die Beteiligten zu Glück oder
Unglück bestimmt sind. Am besten ist die Wiedererkennung, wenn sie zu-
gleich mit der Peripetie eintritt, wie es bei der im Ödipus [von Sophokles]
der Fall ist. (Aristotle 1994, 35; chapter 11)

While Weerth similarly stresses the crucial role of insight, self-knowledge, and self-
recognition for the plot of the proletarian drama, the ensuing reversal of fortune
is diametrically opposed to one that occurs in classical Greek tragedy such as in
Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex. The terrible implications that arise from the transforma-
tion of ignorance into knowledge directly lead to the drama’s final catastrophe. By
contrast, in Weerth’s socialist poetics of revolution, the proletariat’s realisation of
its social condition and hidden powers can effect a reversal of the tragic plot and
lead the action towards an eventual positive resolution. Anagnorisis redresses the
false consciousness of proletarian misery as an immutable and preordained fate.
It causes the recognition of its determining factor. This is identified as the present
socioeconomic order and subsequently leads towards socio-revolutionary action.
Furthermore, in Greek tragedy the fall of the tragic hero results in a dramatic
loss of social status – Oedipus’ social role changes from King of Thebes to a blind
beggar – whereas in the socialist proletarian drama the opposite occurs. It posi-
tions this class as achieving an equally dramatic rise in social position: from the
dehumanised pariah of humankind to the revolutionary vanguard in the social
liberation of man that reverses alienation and social misery. In a parallel to Greek
tragedy, the plot structure and the outcome of the proletarian drama is presumed
288

to have been known in advance, as is the eventual destiny of the protagonists who
are either seen “zu Glück” (the proletarians) or “Unglück bestimmt” (the bourgeois
capitalists). In later rigid interpretations of Historical Materialism, this element of
predetermination in the world historic drama features almost as strongly in Greek
tragedy, leading to a devaluation of human agency and consciousness. The German
communists of 1840s, however, among them Heß, Marx, Engels, and Weerth,
decisively highlight the crucial role that the active formation of a proletarian self-
consciousness plays in precipitating the climax of the drama: the proletarian social
revolution.
One of the most lucid formulations of this intimate connection between prole-
tarian social self-consciousness, socio-revolutionary action, and the reversal of the
social order in Weerth’s oeuvre can be found in the revised version of his article on
English proletarians. Highlighting the seminal role that the British working-class
press, in particular the leading Chartist paperThe Northern Star,22 has played in this
process of furthering proletarian self-awareness, he comments:

Es ist rührend, wenn man sieht, wie jene den Arbeiterinteressen gewidmeten
Zeitungen nie müde werden, die Leiden jeder Stadt, jedes Dorfes ans Licht
zu bringen, wie sie nicht verschmähen, die kleinsten Details jener Ereignisse
aufzunehmen, welche doch endlich den Arbeiter zum Bewußtsein und den
Besitzenden zur Verzweiflung bringen müssen. (Weerth 1957 III, 211)

This passage highlights how vital Weerth considers the acquisition of a proletarian
social awareness to be. For the worker’s gaining of consciousness and the despera-
tion of the capitalist are presented as two nearly simultaneous processes, with the
socio-revolutionary action being omitted. Weerth in his poems and essays about
the English working class pursues a similar goal of engendering a socio-revolution-
ary consciousness that he identifies as the ideological function of the Northern Star:
through its writings about the existing class struggles, “die mit der Entwicklung
der Industrie immer zahlreicher werdenden Einzelkämpfe der Arbeiter und ihrer

22 The Northern Star (1837-1852) was crucial for disseminating the Chartist ideology across Brit-
ain and propagating the movement’s campaign for political and social rights of the working
classes. During the years when Weerth stayed in Bradford it had a nationwide circulation of
around six thousand to nine thousand copies per week. (For a recent collection of essays on
the Chartist press, see Allen & Ashton 2005.) One of The Northern Star’s editors George Julian
Harney was a friend of both Weerth and Marx and Engels. Acting as the paper’s Germany cor-
respondent, Engels contributed several articles to it between 1844 and 1845. Walter Grab and
Uwe Friesel further state that Weerth also wrote several essays for it (1973, 196): a claim that
was impossible for me to either corroborate or refute.
 289

Herren in voller Ausdehnung vor die Augen des Volkes [zu bringen]” (Weerth
1957 III, 353).
Similarly, in Der alte Wirth in Lancashire the causal chain between the prole-
tarian coming to consciousness and the desperation of the capitalists still lacks
the decisive element of revolutionary action (Weerth is not as naïve as to assume
that the bourgeoisie, remorseful of the social cost of capitalism, would reform
the socioeconomic system). In omitting the act of resistance here, Weerth further
stresses the key importance of the formation of a proletarian consciousness. The
moment of recognition of the social condition is the instant when the proletarian
actions take on a socio-revolutionary dimension. Weerth is convinced that it forms
the turning point in the proletarian tragedy, its peripeteia. The “Drama” of current
proletarian suffering, which one may read “auf jeder Seite eines Blattes [i.e. The
Northern Star], das sich überhaupt um das Volk kümmert” (Weerth 1845, 31), will
be ended through a proletarian social revolution.
Several of Weerth’s proletarian poems depict this turning point of the proletar-
ian drama at which resignation gives way to incipient socio-revolutionary action.
Without relating it back to the tradition of poetics, Jürgen Fohrmann has identi-
fied this shift as the seminal characteristic of most of Weerth’s proletarian poems:

In die Dauer, die Passivität, die Resignation bricht eine andere Zeit ein:
der Augenblick des Widerstands, die Gelegenheit der Solidarität. Was Georg
Weerth inszeniert, ist der Ruck, das an den Moment gebundene Okkasio-
nelle, das das individuelle, disparate Leiden zu einem aktionsbereiten Körper
zusammenschließen läßt. (Fohrmann 1993, 65-66; Fohrmann’s emphasis)

What Fohrmann fails to mention in his otherwise very astute depiction of the
structure of Weerth’s proletarian poems is that this reversal of action, the drama’s
peripeteia, is preceded by an insight into the proletarian social condition.
Among Weerth’s proletarian poems it is arguably “Der alte Wirth in Lanca-
shire” (first published in the Gesellschaftsspiegel in 1845) that stages most dramati-
cally and paradigmatically this shift from resignation to resistance.23 This move is
also what distinguishes his Lieder aus Lancashire from most contemporary Eng-

23 The central importance of this poem for the cycle of Die Lieder aus Lancashire is also underlined
by the fact that when it was republished in the Rheinische Jahrbücher in the same year, its title
was changed to “Lied aus Lancashire.” For Fumio Takaki it provides strong evidence “daß das
Gedicht im Mittelpunkt des Zyklus stehen sollte” (1993, 75).
290

lish social poetry, including working-class poetry.24 As the title suggests, Weerth’s
poem is set in an inn in the heartland of British industrialisation, Lancashire, and
it deals with the fate of four of the innkeeper’s proletarian patrons. Complaining
about their social condition over their “jämmerliches Bier,” they realise that in spite
of the different nature of their professions – day labourer, woollen weaver, agricul-
tural labourer and coal miner – they are as proletarians exposed to the same socio-
economic violence.25 All four have experienced a similar degree of alienation and
exploitation of their labour. The parallels between their life-stories are highlighted
by the fact that the form and syntax of Stanza 4 to 6 are identical:

Der Erste von dem armen Pack,

Das ist der bleiche, stille Jack.
Der spricht: “Und was ich auch begonnen –
Hab nimmer Seide dabei gesponnen!”

24 A good example to illustrate this point would be the poem “The Lay of the Wool Comber”
(1846) by the Bradford wool comber and Chartist Abraham Wildman (1803-1870). In a much
more concrete manner than any of Weerth’s poem, it powerfully depicts the harrowing living-
and working conditions of a wool comber and his family of seven in a Bradford slum. They eke
out their existence in a single dark room, which is at once their “their workshop, and cookshop
and home”, and are permanently exposed to noxious fumes. Their exploited labour is also (like
in Weerth’s “Der alte Wirth”) compared to that of other workers: “Like quarry-men digging
/ We’re snatching and jigging.” However, Wildman’s poem completely lacks any element of
resistance, as the resigned ending illustrates, which suggests that only way for the workers to
escape from their plight is death. Unlike Weerth’s “Alter Wirth,” which concludes with a note of
socio-revolutionary defiance, the workers in Wildman’s poem only rise up to work themselves
to death: “Come rouse up, my young ones, half-starved and in blight; / The comb-pots our altar
from morning to night / Then stir up the fire, There‘s death in the fume; / Work, work while
you can, / Pale shreds of a man, / Thank God there’s a rest and a peace in the Tomb.” The only
potential way out other than the grave seems the appeal to upper-class charity: “Come some
one behold us with charity’s meed / And see how the heart in its sorrows can bleed” (Quoted
in Jowitt 1991, 15-16). I cannot agree with Mary Kemp-Ashraf who detects a parallel between
Wildman’s poem and Weerth’s Lieder aus Lancashire in their shared “ironische, kompromißlose
Aggressivität” (1974, 55-56). Uwe Zemke (1993, 127) calls for a comparison of Weerth’s ‘Eng-
lish’ poems to Chartist poetry. My investigations, however, have found very few parallels. For
anthologies and studies of Chartist poetry, see Kovalev 1956, Scheckner 1989, Schwab 1993,
Randall 1999 and Sanders 2009.
25 Moses Heß further emphasises the ubiquitousness of proletarian exploitation, when, in an add-
ed footnote to “jämmerliches Bier” he points out that similar practices exist in Germany’s indus-
trial towns: “Das erinnert uns willkührlich an einige der ersten Bierwirthschaften Elberfeld’s, in
welchen zweierlei Bier gezapft wird: gutes für Herren und jämmerliches für die Arbeiter, welche
in der Regel nur am Sonntag dahin gehen. Das Arbeiterbier kostet aber nicht weniger, als das Her-
renbier. Anm. d. Red.” (Heß 1971 I, 64; Heß’ emphasis).
 291
Und Tom begann: “Schon manches Jahr
Spann ich die Fäden fein und klar;
Das wollene Kleid mocht’ manchem frommen –
Bin selbst aber nie in die Wolle gekommen!”

Und Bill darauf: “Mit treuer Hand

Führt ich den Pflug durch brittisch Land;
Die Saaten sah ich lustig prangen –
Bin selbst aber hungrig nach Bett gegangen!”

Und weiter schallt’s: “Aus tiefem Schacht

Hat Ben manch Fuder Kohlen gebracht;
Doch als sein Weib ein Kind geboren –
God-dam, – ist Weib und Kind erfroren!” (Weerth 1971, 64-65)

In a poetic form that resembles that of the folk- or a broadside ballad,26 Weerth
here shows a Marxist view of the proletarian tragedy through presenting an analy-
sis of exploited proletarian labour. As such, it is highly reminiscent of Shelley’s
proto-Marxist analysis in his “Song to the Men of England” (1819) (discussed in
chapter 1) to which Weerth’s poem also intertextually relates back. For instance,
Shelley’s speaker asks his listeners in Stanza 1: “Men of England, wherefore plough
/ For the lords who lay ye low?” (ll. 1-2) In Stanza 5 he declares: “The seed ye sow,
another reaps” (l. 17). In Stanza 5 of Weerth’s poem, Bill similarly recounts that:
“Mit treuer Hand / Führt ich den Pflug durch brittisch Land; / Die Saaten sah ich
lustig prangen – / Bin selbst aber hungrig nach Bett gegangen!” Furthermore, the
rhetorical question of Shelley’s speaker – “Wherefore weave with toil and care / The

26 Broadside-ballads were printed ballads “sold in the streets, at fairs and markets by vendors who
would sing out their ballads in order to attract the crowds” (Palmer 1974, 10). Thus this genre
mixes in a particular way the oral and the written. Thematically, they often dealt with sensational
news about heinous crimes or spectacular executions, yet also included social and political is-
sues. Although this tradition dates back to the 16th century, broadside-ballads reached the height
of their popularity during the 19th century when many “hundreds of thousands of broadside bal-
lads were printed and sold” (Palmer 1974, 14). Among them exist some that resemble Weerth’s
“Der alte Wirth in Lancashire.” These stage a similar process of their proletarian characters gain-
ing consciousness of their social condition through discussing their respective experiences and
observations. For instance in a “New Dialogue and Song on the Times” from the 1840s, two
proletarians who carry the same common names as two of the characters in Weerth’s poem, Bill
and Jack, also gain a comparable awareness of the capitalist as their class enemy. It is the “big
cotton masters of Lancashire” and the “Factory Masters” who exploit them (quoted in Palmer
1974, 218-219). For an essay that investigates Weerth’s use of folk song elements in his poetry
written in England, see Weber 1987. Weber, however, only considers the German tradition.
292

rich robes your tyrants wear?” (ll. 3-4) and the observations made in Stanza 5 of
“SME”– “The robes ye weave, another wears” (l. 18) – are echoed by Tom’s lament
in Stanza 4 of Weerth’s poem: “Schon manches Jahr / Spann ich die Fäden fein und
klar; / Das wollene Kleid mocht’ manchem frommen – / Bin selbst aber nie in die
Wolle gekommen!” In sharp contrast, however, to Shelley’s work, in Weerth’s poem
there is no obvious bourgeois speaker present who explains to the proletarians the
wider ideological and socioeconomic background of their immediate experience
of exploitation. Unlike Shelley, Weerth credits the proletarians themselves with
gaining these insights and subsequently taking socio-revolutionary action. All his
characters forcefully expose the alienation of the producers from their products as
a major cause for proletarian deprivation and destitution. In contrast to Shelley’s
poem, Weerth’s characters prove that they do not need a bourgeois authority to en-
lighten them, even though one could of course argue that Weerth with his didactic
‘showing’ also aims for an enlightenment of his partly lower-class readership of the
socialist Gesellschaftsspiegel.
In spite of these key differences concerning the acquisition of proletarian social
awareness, there are further parallels between the critique of capitalism in Weerth’s
“Der alte Wirth” and in Shelley’s 1819 poems. For instance, the reduction of the
labourers to the status of tools and machines, of which both “SME” and The Mask
of Anarchy try to make the labourers aware, is also indirectly indicted in Weerth’s
poem. As I have indicated in my analysis of the poem, the Shape in TMoA reveals
to her lower-class listeners that they are being “made / Loom, and plough, and
sword, and spade” (ll. 163-164) by their exploiters. In “Der alte Wirth,” it is the
proletarians themselves who highlight this role in the process of production. As
Bill asserts when he recounts that “Mit treuer Hand / Führt ich den Pflug durch
brittisch Land” without reaping the harvest he has sown, he constitutes an exten-
sion of the plough, the tool he uses.
Again, the crucial difference lies in the way this insight is acquired. In con-
trast to TMoA, in which the proletarians are made to listen to the Shape’s lecture
with the aim of inducing an awareness of their degraded social role and status, in
“Der alte Wirth” the proletarians reach such anagnorisis – the sudden reversal of
unconsciousness to consciousness – by listening to each other’s stories. As they
gain an insight into the causes for their tragic suffering under the capitalist system
independently from the bourgeoisie, they manage to achieve an acute awareness
of their social condition. One might argue that Bill, when he stresses the role that
his faithful “Hand” has played over the years in the process of production, re-
flects the seminal fact that the “Industrial Revolution replaced the servant and man
by the ‘operative’ and the ‘hand’” (Hobsbawm 1999, 63). This reduction of the
 293

workers to their productive body parts that are being exploited – in Bill’s case his
hand – effectively relegates the workers to the status of objects or machines. Recog-
nising their dehumanised status, Weerth’s proletarians realise how, under industrial
capitalism, reckless competition has disabled the ideology of moral economy and
placed the proletarians into a matter-of-fact relationship with the capitalists. The
ethical quality of “Faith,” which Bill attributes to his working hands, no longer
plays any role. In contrast to earlier times, labour relations are no longer influenced
by any moral-patriarchal obligations the master was supposed to feel towards his
servants.27 Now labour relations are purely dictated by the rationale of market eco-
nomics, a development that Weerth reveals not only in this poem but also in the
revised version of his article on the English workers. Weerth claims that the manu-
facturer now regards his worker as “hands” – even more cheaply replaceable than
a machine. Before the advance of bourgeois capitalism the master would still have
had a closer relationship to his workers. However, when he compares the earlier
relationship to the one the farmer has to his ox, the former being responsible for
the latter’s welfare, he at the same time casts doubt on the humane nature of former
working relations. As Weerth pointedly states, farmer and ox “stehen eigentlich in
einem innigern Verhältnis wie die erstern,” i.e. capitalists and workers that form
the protagonists and antagonists in the drama of class struggle:

Außer dem Interesse, was der Besitzer eines Ochsen an der augenblickli-
chen Arbeit dieses Tieres nimmt, muß ihm auch noch an dem körperlichen
Wohlsein seines Zugstieres gelegen sein; er muß ihn konservieren, um ihn
desto länger ins Joch spannen zu können. Der Fabrikant sieht dagegen in
seinem Arbeiter nur eine Maschine, an deren augenblicklicher Benutzung
ihm nur gelegen ist und deren Verschleiß ihm deswegen durchaus gleich-
gültig sein kann, da sie ja jeden Tag anderweitig, und zwar ohne weitere
Kosten, zu ersetzen ist. Wenn der Fabrikant von seinen Arbeitern spricht, da
redet er auch niemals von Menschen: er tituliert seine Arbeiter schlechtweg
“hands”, Hände. (Weerth 1957 III, 219)28

27 See for instance Eric Hobsbawm’s differentiation between the labourer before the advance of in-
dustrial capitalism and the modern proletarian labourer: “[…] the proletarian, whose only link
with his employer is a ‘cash-nexus,’ must be distinguished from the ‘servant’ or pre-industrial
dependant, who has a much more complex human and social relationship with his ‘master,’ and
one which implies duties on both sides, though very unequal ones” (1993, 63).
28 In his speech at the “Free Trade Congress” in Brussels (16-17 September 1847) Weerth repeated
these allegations against the British capitalists (for an article on this speech and a comparison
between the French versions and their German translations, see Füllner 1997). Taking the terms
“hands” as an illustration both of the dehumanised view of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie
and the alienating effects of capitalism, he calls for a fundamental change in the laws that govern
294

All four proletarians in “Der alte Wirth” recognise their status as machines, as tools
for the capitalists to increase their profit, which compounds their alienation from
the product of their labour. As the coal miner Bill particularly poignantly realises,
his status as an instrument in an alienated process of production is directly respon-
sible for the tragic death of his wife and newly born child. Although Bill lifts coal
daily from the mineshaft, both die because of a lack of fuel. Their death is cyni-
cally ironical, indicting the screwed logic of the capitalist mode of production, in
which – as Marxism maintains – the capitalists directly profit from depriving the
producers of their products.
Weerth’s poem, however, does not end with such a profound proletarian an-
agnorisis into the workings of capitalism but goes beyond it. The proletarians’ ac-
counts of their tragic suffering have a further cathartic effect on them, that leads
them towards socio-revolutionary action. In the poem, they find themselves in the
double role of being both audience and actors. As labourers and workers, they are
protagonists in the proletarian tragedy. However, when they listen to the stories
of suffering and exploitation that they are being told by their fellow proletarians,
they also become spectators of this drama. This double role of both audience and
protagonist also explains why the strong emotions (the characteristic of catharsis)
awakened by these tales immediately lead to peripeteia. In the final stanza this sud-
den reversal of action takes place when passive resignation gives way to an angry
expression of a socio-revolutionary attitude. The retelling of stories of exploitation
and constant deprivation to each other engenders the crucial recognition that the
proletarian tragedy is not preordained. Instead, it is caused by specific social factors
and the actions of a particular social class, the oppression of the proletariat by the
bourgeoisie through the socioeconomic system of capitalism.
These insights make them – unlike the peasants in the poem “Die Winzer” –
abandon all beliefs in divine powers and any notion of theodicy. As Marx posits in
his famous critique of religion as “das Opium des Volks” (MEGA II, 171; Marx’s
emphasis) in the “Einleitung Zur Kritik der Hegel’schen Rechts-Philosophie” (1844),

contemporary socioeconomic relations: “Und wahrlich, die Arbeiter haben großen Anspruch
auf etwas mehr Großmut, als ihnen bisher zuteil geworden. Man hat sie bisher in der ökono-
mischen Wissenschaft so wie in der industriellen Praxis behandelt: nicht wie lebende, fühlende
Menschen, ja nicht einmal so gut wie Lasttiere, sondern lediglich wie einen Ballen irgendeiner
Ware. Man hat ihr Los abhängen lassen nicht von ihren menschlichen Bedürfnissen, sondern
von einem starren Gesetze, von den unbarmherzigen Zufällen der Nachfrage und Zufuhr. Ja, in
England hat sich diese Anschauungsweise in der Bourgeoisie so entschieden eingewurzelt, daß
die dortigen Fabrikanten nicht sagen: Ich beschäftige 100 Leute, sondern 200 Hände (hands)”
(Weerth 1956 II, 128-129).
 295

the disillusionment with religion is a necessary theoretical precondition for the

formation of a proletarian consciousness and socio-revolutionary action:

Die Aufhebung der Religion als des illusorischen Glücks des Volkes ist die
Forderung seines wirklichen Glücks. Die Forderung, die Illusionen über sei-
nen Zustand aufzugeben, ist die Forderung, einen Zustand aufzugeben, der
der Illusionen bedarf. Die Kritik der Religion ist also im Keim die Kritik
des Jammerthales, dessen Heiligenschein die Religion ist. [...] Die Kritik der
Religion enttäuscht den Menschen, damit er denke, handle, seine Wirklich-
keit gestalte, wie ein enttäuschter, zu Verstand gekommener Mensch [...]
(MEGA II, 171; Marx’s emphasis)

The characters in Weerth’s poem undergo a similar process of disillusionment with

the palliative ideology of religion. It is indicated by Bill’s curse “God-dam” in
Stanza 6 with which he expresses his wrath over the death of his wife and child. At
the same time this curse marks the poem’s turning point, the shift from proletarian
despair to socio-revolutionary anger. In the final stanza this strong emotion takes
hold of the other three characters and erupts in a choric curse against the capitalists
and the rich bourgeoisie. In the instant that all four proletarians expose the belief
in divine justice as illusory by literally damming God, they simultaneously shed
all delusions of what causes their suffering and how to overcome it. This ideologi-
cal disillusionment (which, as pointed out, is also a key demand in Heß’ address
in the first number of the Gesellschaftsspiegel) leads them to confront their true
antagonists, their class enemies, whom they recognise as being directly responsible
for their tragic socioeconomic status as proletarians:

Und Jack und Tom und Bill und Ben –

Sie riefen allesamt: “God-dam!”
Und selbe Nacht auf weichem Flaume
Ein Reicher lag in bösem Traume. – (Weerth 1971, 65)

Although this collective curse is reminiscent of the threefold curse in Heine’s “Die
armen Weber,” the target of their damnation differs markedly. In Weerth’s poem,
the proletarians’ curses are directed against the capitalists and the bourgeoisie,
whereas in Heine’s poem this social class is spared and it is highly ambiguous
against whom their anger is directed (as I have discussed in chapter 3.2.5). How-
ever, “Die armen Weber” is not the only Heine ballad Weerth recalls in “Der alte
Wirth.” In an obvious allusion to the final lines of Heine’s revolutionary ballad
“Belsatzar” (1822) – “Belsatzar ward aber in selbiger Nacht / Von seinen Knech-
ten umgebracht” (Heine 1997 I, 56), – Weerth’s poem suggests that the writing
296

is on the wall for the bourgeoisie. As the dash at the end of the last line of “Der
alte Wirth” suggests,29 both the proletarian imprecation of the capitalists and the
bourgeois nightmares about murdering proletarians marks just the prelude to the
drama of the proletarian social revolution.30 Weerth insists in his poetics of revo-
lution that the consciousness of socioeconomic exploitation combined with the
revolutionary anger that this realisation produces constitutes the necessary precon-
dition for the proletarian social revolution.
It becomes even more evident, in a comparison of “Der alte Wirth in Lan-
cashire” with the concluding scene of Weerth’s original version of his article on
English proletarians, that he genuinely views this shift towards socio-revolutionary
action both in terms of an Aristotelian poetics of drama and in line with Marx’s
emphasis on the seminal role of social consciousness in this process. In it he evokes
a similar moment of potential socio-revolutionary proletarian awakening. He also
describes Chartist meetings in which the contemporary British mass movement
campaigned for political and social emancipation of the working classes. At one
of those meetings, Weerth reports, the then “undisputed leader of the movement”
(Brown 1998, 47), Feargus O’Connor (1796-1855), indicted the disastrous profit-
minded negligence of the mine owners by drawing the audience’s attention to a
recent mining disaster “in den Bergwerken von Haswell” in the County of Dur-
ham on 28 September 1844. Although the explosion killed close to one hundred
miners, it was followed by the usual whitewash that absolved the mine owner from
any responsibility for their deaths by presenting the accident as fate, as an act of
God.31 The audience – like the characters in “Der alte Wirth” – no longer believe

29 Bruno Kaiser omits this seminal punctuation mark in the version of this poem that he includes
in his edition of Weerth’s collected works (see Weerth 1956 I, 202).
30 An additional (crossed-out) third stanza in a draft version of the poem puts a concrete name
to the threat to the bourgeoisie: “Und manchmal um die Abendstund, / Da tobt es drinnen
kraus und bunt, / Das sind gar wunderliche Christen, / Repealer nur und wilde Chartisten!”
(Weerth 1956 I, 302) Repealers were those Irish who campaigned – under leadership of Daniel
O’Connell – for a repeal of the ‘Act of Union’ (1801) between Ireland and Great Britain. Eoin
Bourke has argued (1984, 59 and 1999, 154) that Weerth hoped for a coalition between the Re-
pealers and the Chartists to overthrow the British government. Throughout 1844 the Chartist
leader Feargus O’Connor, who was Irish himself, strongly campaigned for such a coalition. For
a survey of German verdicts on O’Connell during the Vormärz, see Bourke 1996.
31 In a footnote to his poem “Die hundert Männer von Haswell” (1845) that deals with the same
mining disaster, Weerth explicitly highlights this bourgeois strategy to cover up the lack of safety
in the mines by presenting it as an act of God: “Das Verdict lautete: “Visitation of God”. Man
versichert aber es sei dies Unglück durch die Nachlässigkeit der Grubenbesitzer entstanden”
(Weerth 1971 I, 63). Engels mentions the same accident in Der Lage der arbeitenden Klasse
in England (1845), also claiming that all these “Unglücksfälle [...] raffen jährlich, nach dem
 297

such transparent attempts to blame higher powers for these catastrophes. Indeed,
the listeners’ reaction to the news of the miners’ deaths closely resembles that of the
proletarian characters in Weerth’s poem when they hear about the death of Ben’s
wife and child. As pointed out, the proletarian characters express their solidarity
in resisting further capitalist exploitation in the poems last stanza: “riefen allesamt:
‘God-dam.’” A similar socio-revolutionary awakening and mobilisation occurs
among the audience at the end of the meeting. Hearing the news of the mining
disaster and of the reckless methods of capitalist profiteering, the audience unites
in cursing the exploiters:

Als [O’Connor] zum Schluß erzählte, daß in den letzten Tagen, wiederum
in den Bergwerken zu Haswell, durch Nachlässigkeit der Grubenbesitzer,
hundert Menschen auf einen Schlag um’s Leben gekommen seien und das
Verdict wie gewöhnlich: “Visitation of God” gelautet habe, da war es mit
der Geduld der Leute zu Ende, sie entfernten sich, und ein Fluch klang aus
jedem Munde. (Weerth 1845, 325)

Weerth suggests, through his depiction of Chartist meetings, that the theatrical
staging of the proletarian tragedy induces the awakening of a socio-revolutionary
consciousness and anger.

Das ist der Ort, wo der Arbeiter zum hellsten Bewußtsein erwacht, wo er
fühlt, daß er ein Mensch ist, daß er ein Recht als Mensch hat, ein Recht auf
sich selbst, wie auf die alte ewige Erde! (Weerth 1845, 324-325)

‘Mining Journal,’ etwa 1400 Menschenleben dahin” (MEW II, 464). He maintains that these
disasters “kommen direkt auf Rechnung des Bourgeoisie-Eigennutzes” (463) and also exposes
the biased verdicts of the coroners’ juries: “Fast in allen Bezirken sind die Totenschau-Juries in
allen Fällen von den Grubenbesitzern abhängig, [...] daß das Verdikt auf “Tod durch Zufall”
lautet. [...] Aber der Ch[ildren’s] E[mployment] Rep[ort] nimmt keinen Anstand die Besitzer
der Grube geradezu für die große Mehrzahl dieser Fälle verantwortlich zu machen” (MEW II,
464). For a contemporary critique of the exploitative practices in the mining business on the
occasion of this explosion, see also the article “The Haswell Murder,” published in The Northern
Star on 12 October 1844 (Vol. VIII/No. 361). Although the article also attacks, very aggres-
sively, the bias of the coroner’s juries and the profit-minded negligence of the miner owners, it
calls – in contrast to Engels and Weerth – not for social revolution, but for social reform. In
particular, it demands practical improvements in the mining business, so “that the survivors will
have the satisfaction to know that at least their poor fellow-labourers, have not died in vain,
if their ‘accidental’ death procures something like ‘SECURITY’ for the future” (Anonymous
1844c, 5).
298

Weerth here seems to recall Marx’s dialectics between a consciousness of proletarian

alienation and social revolution. Being a proletarian means “der völlige Verlust des
Menschen.” As Marx argues in the “Einleitung Zur Kritik der Hegel’schen Rechts-
Philosophie” (1844), [das Proletariat] also nur durch “völlige Wiedergewinnung des
Menschen sich selbst gewinnen kann” (MEGA II, 182; Marx’s emphasis). Weerth
depicts the Chartist meeting as the place where such a Marxist socio-revolutionary
consciousness is acquired in practice. Weerth suggests here that the awareness (that
under capitalism the proletariat is being forcefully alienated from its human state)
will eventually lead to a proletarian social revolution. He thus shares Marx’s view as
expressed in his article “Kritische Randglossen” (1844). For both, a “sociale Revo-
lution” marks a fundamental “Protestation des Menschen gegen das entmenschte
Leben,” as Marx terms it (MEGA II, 462; Marx’s emphasis).
For Weerth, taking part in the drama of the Chartist meeting and becoming
an active member of the working-class movement forms a first step towards this
radical revolution both in consciousness and in the material world. The proletarian
who consciously starts fighting for his social emancipation is transformed from
a seemingly half-dead depraved creature to a brilliant revolutionary orator, from
victim of exploitation to an instigator of a shift in social awareness. This is sug-
gested in the depiction of the following scene that allegedly took place regularly at
Chartist meetings:

Am Sonntag Morgen um zehn, und Abends um halb sieben Uhr werden

diese chartistischen Versammlungen gehalten. Männer und Weiber, in ver-
dammt schlechten Röcken, drängen sich durch die niedrige Thür. Die Män-
ner nehmen den großen Raum ein, die Frauen und Mädchen setzen sich auf
die Brettererhöhung rings um den Redner herum. Nach vielem Scharren
und Spucken entsteht endlich eine Todtenstille. Der Redner spricht entwe-
der über die bekannten chartistischen Prinzipien oder wählt einen Text aus
den Begebenheiten des Tages. Derselbe Mensch, den man in Lumpen auf
der Straße sah, den man für ein halbtodtes, verkommenes Geschöpf hielt,
hier trifft man ihn auf der Rednerbühne, und eine Sprache fließt ihm von
den Lippen, die bald die Versammlung zu jauchzender Wuth begeistert,
bald alle Herzen mit einer Wehmut erfüllt, daß heiße Thränen an den Wan-
gen hinablaufen. (Weerth 1845, 325)

It is not only the orator, however, who is transformed by the electric atmosphere
of the meeting. The proletarian’s dramatic performance elicits from the audience
(that is seated around the “Rednerbühne” like an audience in a theatre) a truly
cathartic response that carries with it the potential to develop into socio-revolu-
 299

tionary action. Like the spectators of Greek tragedy, the proletarian audience that
witnesses this staging of proletarian tragedy experiences the profound emotions of
eleos and phobos. Aristotle singles these out as the two key cathartic feelings to be
engendered by the staging of tragedy. As Manfred Fuhrmann explains, eleos, which
is best translated into German as “Jammer” or “Rührung,” denotes

[…] stets einen heftigen, physisch sich äußernden Affekt und wurde oft mit
den Ausdrücken für Klagen, Zetern und Wehgeschrei verbunden. Die aris-
totelische Rhetorik verlieh dem Begriff eine ethische Komponente: Eleos sei
der Verdruß über ein großes Übel, daß jemanden treffe, der es nicht verdient
habe; wer Eleos empfinde, nehme an, daß das Übel auch ihn selbst oder eine
ihm nahestehende Person treffen könne (2,8). Diese Definition entspricht
genau der Auffassung, die sich aus Kap. 11 und 13 der Poetik ergibt: die drei
Merkmale des schweren Übels, der Unverdientheit und des Rückbezugs auf
den Anteilnehmenden kehren dort als Erfordernisse der tragischen Hand-
lung wieder. (Fuhrmann 1994, 162)

The passage quoted above illustrates how the same affects that, according to Aris-
totle, tragedy ought to induce are also caused by the performance of the Chartist
meeting. The Chartist’s rousing speech induces the strong physical emotion of
eleos: “jauchzehnd[e] Wuth,” “Wehmut” and “heiße Thränen.” The three ethical
categories that, according to Aristotle, simultaneously cause these strong affects
also apply. From Weerth’s Communist perspective (as well as from the perspective
of the orator’s working-class audience), proletarian suffering constitutes a great
evil that is not only undeserved but could potentially afflict any member of the
audience.
The Chartist audience also experiences the other cathartic emotion of phobos
that denotes a strong state of excitement. Phobos originally means “ein durch Er-
schrecken bewirktes physisches Tun” (Fuhrmann 1982, 162). When, in a different
speech, O’Connor depicts the events of the unsuccessful rebellion in Manchester
in 1842, a strong physical-emotional reaction is observed among the members of
the audience:

O’Connor schilderte bei dieser Gelegenheit den letzten Aufstand in Man-

chester. Da blitzten alle Augen, die Adern schwollen auf den Stirnen auf
und manche Faust ballte sich wie zu schrecklichem Schlage. (Weerth 1845,
325)
300

However, the action that O’Connor’s account of the recent revolt triggers among
his listeners is not yet socio-revolutionary, but merely has such future potential. As
the simile “wie zu schrecklichem Schlage” highlights, the clenched proletarian fist
does not strike at its class enemies yet.
This observation suggests that, as Weerth was adopting an increasingly Marxist
perspective on social revolution, it also became increasingly apparent to him that
the English proletariat had not yet reached a socialist revolutionary consciousness.
In spite of his often highly enthusiastic praise for the resilience and the spirit of re-
sistance among the English proletarians, from his perspective they still lacked some
key insights that might translate such gestures of social protest into actual socio-
revolutionary action. This view emerges for instance in Weerth’s essay “Geschichte
der Chartisten von 1832 bis 1848,” in which he exposes the futility of “passiven
Widerstand” (1957 III, 355). Although Weerth expresses great admiration for the
bravery of the striking workers, he presents them as ultimately deluded. In particu-
lar, he regards strikes as a waste of socio-revolutionary energies, energies that would
better be employed in trying to remove their capitalist masters. The struggle of the
striking workers is regarded as tragically misconceived since it does not challenge
the capitalist system as such, but rather hopes to improve the proletarian condition
within its confines. While the workers, in certain instances, achieve temporary
victories such as concessions by the capitalists, in all other cases the tragic flaw of
the proletarian hero (his harmatia) eventually leads to tragedy’s final catastrophe:
he is crushed by his own fate:

Im anderen Fall bricht aber der mutige Paria unter der Wucht seines Schick-
sals zusammen. Weiber und Kinder hungerten schon seit Wochen; der Herd
der Hütte erlosch, das Bett ist verschwunden; gebeugt und ermüdet bis zum
Tod, schleicht er endlich mit seinen Kameraden vor die Türe des Herrn –
es ist aus, und man erklärt sich für besiegt. Dies ist die Art und Weise des
Kampfes, den Arbeiter und Herrn seit den letzten fünfzig Jahren mit einer
Ausdauer und Erbitterung geführt haben, die kaum ihresgleichen kennen.
[...] Welche Energie, welche Ausdauer und welcher Mut wird in ihnen ver-
schwendet! (Weerth 1957 III, 355-356)
 301

4.1.5 “Glück auf, Silesia”: International Proletarian Solidarity and

Social Consciousness

As I have already suggested in the analysis of Engels’ two speeches in Elberfeld and
the excerpts from his Lage der arbeitenden Klasse in England, large sections of the
German Communist Movement were internationally oriented. This international-
ist outlook, which can in part be explained by the fact that nearly all of its leading
figures were in exile at one time or another, had become a seminal feature of Ger-
man communism several years before the publication of Das Manifest der Kommu-
nistischen Partei (1848) with its famous final exhortation: “Proletarier aller Länder
vereinigt euch!” (MEW IV, 493) Gregory Claeys points out that in 1844, at the
latest, Marx and Engels reached the opinion that “‘local communism’ […] was an
impossibility and that revolution had to sweep through the industralized countries
simultaneously” (1985, 456). Weerth shared this international perspective, which
foregrounds both the transnational dimension of proletarian exploitation and of
proletarian revolution. Chartism, by contrast, was largely an exclusively British
working-class movement. Often employing a nationalist rhetoric, it centred on its
own, highly national, struggle for social reform and socio-political improvement.
As Richard Brown highlights, “Chartism was a remarkably insular movement”
(1998, 101). Only later, when the Chartist George Julian Harney – a friend of
Marx, Engels, and Weerth – gained greater influence (not at least by being ap-
pointed editor to the movement’s largest paper The Northern Star in 1845), did a
more internationalist faction emerge. Harney also founded the London-based in-
ternational association ‘The Fraternal Democrats’ in 1845. The association adopt-
ed the slogan “All Men are brethren” as its motto, which it shared with the ‘Bund
der Kommunisten’ in London, to which it also maintained close ties. Weerth, in
his “Geschichte der Chartisten,” stresses these links and praises Harney’s important
role in the formation of an international workers’ movement:32

Harney, der glänzende Redner, der ausgezeichnete Schriftsteller, war es, der
dem unter Leitung dreier Deutscher, Schapper, Bauer und Moll, in London

32 Harney, in turn, also held Weerth in high esteem. The Northern Star featured extensive coverage
of Weerth’s speech at the Bruxelles ‘Free Trade Congress’ in September 1847. Naming him as
one of the members of the Fraternal Democrats, the paper (Vol. XI/No. 528/4 December 1847)
introduces him as “a name well known to our readers who will remember the gallant services
of this gentleman at the late Free Trade Congress at Brussels” and announces that he “has been
nominated by the English Chartists as their representative.” It further praises the achievements
of his political poems, adding that “he is a poet of no mean pretensions, whose songs tell of the
sufferings of Labour’s sons, and their aspirations for a better future” (Anonymous 1847, 4).
302
bestehenden deutschen Arbeiter-Klub zuerst als Engländer die Hand bot,
und dadurch unter britischen und deutschen Arbeiter jene feste Verbrü-
derung herbeiführte, die in der Gesellschaft der ‘Fraternal Democrats’ ihr
Zentrum gefunden. (Weerth 1957 III, 373-374)

It is in front of this background that “Sie saßen auf den Bänken” – another one of
Weerth’s ‘English’ poems that was first published in October 1846 in Püttmann’s
Album – needs to be read.33 This poem strongly emphasises international proletar-
ian solidarity and resistance. It is a poem in which the revolutionary gesture of the
proletarian clenched fist reemerges from the article “Proletarier in England.” Struc-
turally the poem follows the same pattern as “Der alte Wirth in Lancashire” and
the depiction of the Chartist meetings in “Proletarier in England.” The cathartic
anagnorisis that the poem’s proletarian characters experience causes a reversal from
inaction to potential socio-revolutionary action. Constituting Weerth’s poetic reac-
tion to the crushed Silesian Weaver’s Revolt of 1844, the poem shows how a group
of drinking English workers recognise their fraternity with their German coun-
terparts. They realise that, as proletarians, they are oppressed and exploited in the
same manner under any bourgeois system irrespective of the country; they begin to
develop a transnational proletarian class consciousness. Additionally, the English
proletarians also become aware that despite the Silesian weavers’ tragic defeat, the
proletarian socio-revolutionary spirit has been gaining momentum across Europe.
As the poem’s last stanza dramatically expresses, their change from passivity to ac-
tion is the result of these combined insights:

Sie saßen unter der Erle

Schön war des Sommers Zier –
Wilde, zorn’ge Kerle
Aus York und Lancashire
Sie sangen aus rauhen Kehlen,
Sie saßen bis zur Nacht,
Sie ließen sich erzählen
“Von der schlesischen Weberschlacht.”

Und als sie alles wußten

Tränen vergossen sie fast,
Auffuhren die robusten
Gesellen in toller Hast.
33 The revised version of Heine’s poem on the Silesian Weavers’ Revolt, “Die schlesischen Weber,”
was published in this anthology as well. Heine’s poem immediately follows the section with
Weerth’s poems that contains “Sie saßen auf den Bänken.”
 303
Sie ballten die Fäuste und schwangen
Die Hüte im Sturme da;
Wälder und Wiesen klangen:
“Glück auf, Silesia!” (Weerth 1956 I, 204, italics in original)

The cathartic feeling of eleos and phobos, which listening to the drama of the
Silesian Weavers’ Revolt induces, leads to a manifestation of the dormant socio-
revolutionary awareness of the English worker. Marx claims in the “Kritischen
Randglossen” (1844) “daß kein einziger der französischen und englischen Arbeiter-
Aufstände einen so theoretischen und bewußten Charakter besaß, wie der schlesische
Weberaufstand.” One might argue that the account of this revolt also engenders
among the English proletarians “das Bewußtsein über das Wesen des Proletariats,”
a consciousness that their Silesian counterparts have already reached (MEGA II,
459; Marx’s emphasis).34 Swallowing their tears about the tragic defeat of the Sile-
sian weavers, the English workers rise from the benches with a sudden start, clench
their fists in anger, and express their solidarity with the rebellious Silesian weavers.
This international proletarian brotherhood, which transcends national boundaries
as much as professions, is rhetorically celebrated in the poem’s last line. The Eng-
lish workers hail the socio-revolutionary struggle of the Silesian weavers with the
German miners’ greeting which the English proletarians combine with the English
term for the region where the Revolt took place: “Glück auf, Silesia!”
Weerth here seems to develop a Marxist scenario of a dramatic European so-
cial revolution, which will triumph through simultaneous proletarian rebellions
in all industrialised countries. While Florian Vaßen rightly claims that Weerth in
this poem anticipates the Marxist internationalist perspective of Das Manifest der
Kommunistischen Partei (see 1971, 78-79), one must also consider that Marx and
Engels had expressed this international dimension of the working-class movement
already before 1848. Engels concludes his first article on the Silesian uprising in
The Northern Star on 29 June 1844 by pointing out – like Weerth in his depiction
of the “Wilde, zorn’ge Kerle / Aus York und Lancashire” – that the English prole-
tarians in “Lancashire and Yorkshire” pose the same socio-revolutionary threat as
the German weavers:
34 Like Weerth, Marx also seems to develop a poetics of proletarian social revolution when, in the
same article, he casts the Silesian Revolt as a tragic event. It produces in the proletariat at once an
insight into its social being and strong physical emotions reminiscent of ancient Greek tragedy.
Identifying the song of the rebellious weavers’ song as a socially conscious poetic work, he re-
gards “Das Blutgericht” as a “kühne Parole des Kampfes, worin Herd, Fabrik, Distrikt nicht ein-
mal erwähnt werden, sondern das Proletariat sogleich seinen Gegensatz gegen die Gesellschaft
des Privateigenthums in schlagender, scharfer, rücksichtsloser, gewaltsamer Weise herausschreit”
(MEGA II, 459; Marx’s emphasis).
304
Thus it is evident that the consequences of the factory system, of the pro-
gress of machinery, etc., for the working classes are quite the same on the
continent as they are in England: oppression and toil for the many, riches
and wealth for the few; insecurity of fortune, discontent, and riot exist
among the hills of Silesia, as well as in the crowded cities of Lancashire and
Yorkshire. (MEGA III, 609)

For both Engels and Weerth, the drama of the Silesian Revolt highlights how
England, too, forms a socio-revolutionary powder-keg. Even more clearly than in
“Sie saßen auf den Bänken,” this view emerges in a letter that Weerth wrote from
Bradford to his brother Wilhelm on 24 December 1844. Discussing the impact of
the Silesian Weavers’ Revolt, Weerth maintains that when the class consciousness
of the English proletarians matures towards a socialist position, two consecutive
bad harvests occur, and a cyclical commercial crisis arises, then the British proletar-
ian social revolution will break out:

Die sozialistischen Ideen greifen hier in England auf eine erstaunliche Weise
um sich. Wir brauchen hier nur zwei Jahre hintereinander eine Mißernte
zu haben, außerdem irgendein Pech in der kommerziellen Welt, und die
Revolution ist fertig, – eine Revolution nicht gegen königliche Gewalt, ge-
gen parlamentarische Albernheiten oder gegen die Religion, sondern gegen
das Eigentum. Der Arbeiter, der durch chartistische Umtriebe, durch Peti-
tionieren und aufrührerische Meetings nie zu seinem Ziel kam, wird hin-
tereinander den Nerv der jetzigen Gesellschaft zerschneiden und das Geld
anfassen. (Weerth 1989 I, 282)

I would argue that Weerth’s insistence on the specifically social character of the
envisaged English revolution also betrays an implicit criticism of Heine’s “Die ar-
men Weber.” As I have discussed in detail in chapter 2.2.4, in Heine’s poem the
weavers’ anger is portrayed as being directed towards “dem König der Reichen,”
“dem Gotte, dem Tauben,” and the undemocratic German states. Weerth, how-
ever, explicitly dismisses this notion that the proletariat would rise up for political
ends, “gegen königliche Gewalt, gegen parlamentarische Albernheiten oder gegen
die Religion.” Instead he argues that the conscious proletariat would fight for its
own social emancipation by attacking private property, “das Eigentum.” The in-
terpretation of the Silesian Weavers’ Revolt as the “schlesischen Weberschlacht” im-
plies that Weerth, in “Sie saßen auf den Bänken,” regards this confrontation as a
consciously socio-revolutionary battle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.
This perspective that he shares with the vanguard of the German socialist move-
ment sets him apart from Heine in “Die armen Weber.” As illustrated in chapter
 305

2.2.4, Heine goes to great lengths to depict the revolution as being directed against
an anachronistic feudal system and state that is still dominated by the aristocracy.
Weerth, who declares that he is proud to be a “Proletarier, der Religion, Eigen-
tum und Vaterland mitbescheißen hilft,” adopts a decidedly more socialist position
than Heine. As pointed out, in “Die armen Weber” Heine lets his weavers utter a
threefold curse against “dem falschen Vaterlande,” “dem Gotte” und “dem König
der Reichen,” but not against property.
Weerth is convinced that the English workers – like the Silesian weavers – will
also realise that nothing short of proletarian revolution can release them from their
terrible suffering: “Dieser erbärmliche Zustand, daß man bei lebendigem Leibe
schier verwest” (1989 I, 282). As in “Sie saßen auf den Bänken,” in letter to his
brother he also relates the impending English social revolution back to the recent
Weavers’ Revolt in Silesia:

Ich bin davon überzeugt, daß in kurzem derselbe Spektakel hier losbricht,
wie Ihr ihn in Schlesien gehabt habt, und der Unterschied wird nur zwi-
schen diesen beiden Ereignissen der sein, daß in Schlesien der Arbeiter ins
Loch kommt und hier der Arbeiter an’s Ruder. (Weerth 1989 I, 282)

Drawing perhaps upon his firsthand experience with the high level of organisa-
tion of the British working-class movement, the considerably larger number of
proletarian activists, and the advanced proletarianisation of the British working
class, Weerth optimistically maintains that Britain and not Germany will be the
place where a successful proletarian revolution will soon take place. As he also as-
serts in his fragmentary social novel (written between 1845 and 1846), the British
proletariat is much more advanced than in all other countries, including Germany
where “der Arbeiter […] lebt noch in der Furcht des Herrn” (Weerth 1956 II,
227). Pivotally, the British proletariat also possesses a more developed proletarian
social consciousness. Therefore Britain will be birthplace of social revolution:

[…] das englische Proletariat ist über seine Stellung der Bourgeoisie ge-
genüber schon viel klarer wie das aller andern Ländern. Sie wissen, daß die
Herren nicht ohne die Arbeiter fertig werden können und daß nächstens
eine Stunde schlägt, wo es zwischen diesen beiden Klassen einmal zur einer
genaueren Abrechnung kommen wird. (Weerth 1956 II, 226-227)

Weerth insists in the letter that unlike the drama of the crushed Silesian rebellion,
the “Spektakel” of the English proletarian revolt will not have a tragic outcome,
but will achieve its goal. He prophesies that when the English worker “an’s Ruder
306

[kommt],” this will mean a major step towards the universal emancipation of the
proletariat. The Silesian Revolt that was crushed also constitutes an early stage in
this proletarian drama that will be followed by the next act in England.
Such a view of the Silesian Weavers’ Revolt is not unique to Weerth, but is also
voiced by Wilhelm Wolff (who in 1848 became Weerth’s colleague as one of the
journalists with Marx’s newspaper Neue Rheinische Zeitung). In his article “Das
Elend und der Aufruhr in Schlesien” (1845) Wolff identifies this rebellion as the
first act or, at the very least, the prelude to a universal and international proletarian
socio-revolutionary drama:

Wenden wir uns jetzt nach dem Eulengebirge, an dessen Fuße sich der erste
blutige Akt, mindestens ein Vorspiel in dem unaufhaltbaren Proletarierdra-
ma, im Kampfe des niedergetretenen, von der Macht des Geldes und der
schlauen Berechnung zur Maschine erniedrigten Menschen um Wiederge-
winnung seiner Würde, im Kriege der Besitzlosen gegen die Tyrannei und
Selbstsucht des Privateigentums, zu Anfang dieses Monats entwickelt hat.
(Wolff 1965, 168)

Even more so than other socialists, Weerth is convinced that the next scene in the
socio-revolutionary drama will take place in England. As he writes in a letter to his
uncle (22 January 1845), the industrialist Friedrich aus’m Weerth, England seems
to be “das Terrain […], auf dem die nächste Revolution wächst; denn nirgends ist
die Armut und die Unzufriedenheit brennender als hier.” Similar to “Sie saßen
auf den Bänken,” which celebrates the power of the “Wilde, zorn’ge Kerle / Aus
York und Lancashire,” in the letter he also expects the workers “in Lancashire und
Yorkshire” to become the vanguard of social revolution. It will cause “eine totale
Umwälzung” and produce “eine Höllenmaschine […], die den größten Teil der
jetzigen Gesellschaft in die Luft springen wird.” Drawing a link again to the Sile-
sian Weavers’ Revolt, Weerth regards all the signs as pointing to a more auspicious
outcome of this anticipated large-scale proletarian revolt in England than the lo-
calised revolt in Silesia: “so ist auch anzunehmen, daß der englische Arbeiter besser
reüssieren wird wie der schlesische bei seinem kleinen Versuch” (cf. Weerth 1989
I, 287-288).35

35 Weerth’s claims of the likelihood of a British working-class revolution stand in sharp contrast
to the sober assessment of George Julian Harney, one of the most radical Chartists leaders. In
a letter to Friedrich Engels (dated 30 March 1846) Harney writes: “Your speculations as to the
speedy coming of a revolution in England I doubt. Revolutionary changes in Germany I think
certain and likely to come soon. […] The body of the English people, without becoming a slavish
 307

The extent of Weerth’s socio-revolutionary optimism regarding Britain largely

accounts for his bitter disappointment when in 1848, the year of the European
revolutions, the English proletarian revolution failed to take place. The disillusion-
ment within the course of these revolutions, as I will argue in the next subchapter,
became increasingly important in the Marxist poetics of revolution. Chapter 4.4.2.
will illustrate in particular how, for Weerth, the lack of a social revolution in Brit-
ain contributed to the prominence of the genre of farce in his poetics of revolution.

4.2 The Revolutionary Drama between Tragedy and Farce: Marx’s and
Weerth’s Poetics of the Revolutions of 1848/49

4.2.1 Marx’s Shifting Poetics of Revolution from 1848 to 1852

In the concluding subchapter of this study I will illustrate that the development
of a socialist poetics of the revolutions of 1848/49 was a common project of the
German communists surrounding Marx. Recent Marx and Engels scholarship has
foregrounded the major role that Weerth played in Marx’s revolutionary newspa-
per Neue Rheinische Zeitung (June 1848 to May 1849). Scholars have attributed
several articles in the newspaper’s political section to Weerth that were previously
thought to have been written by Marx or Engels.36 As François Melis has con-
clusively shown (2001, 2005 & 2006), the established image of Weerth as the
paper’s leading satirist who lent his sharp wit solely to the newspaper’s art section
cannot be easily upheld and should be reconsidered.37 As Melis maintains, thus
it will become evident “dass die über 150 Jahre tradierte Einschätzung als ‘Feuil-
letonchef ’ nur eine Seite seines journalistischen Wirkens in der Revolution von

people, are becoming an eminently pacific people” (Harney’s emphasis; quoted in Royle 1996,
120).
36 I will subsequently use the established acronym NRhZ to refer to this most important left-wing
newspaper of the German Revolution. Besides Marx as the editor-in-chief and Weerth in charge
of the arts section, it included Engels, Ernst Dronke, Ferdinand and Wihelm Wolff, and Ferdi-
nand Freiligrath among its journalists.
37 This view dates back to Engels who wrote in an article on Weerth in Der Sozialdemokrat in 1883:
“Nach der 1848er Märzrevolution fanden wir [Marx, Weerth und Engels] uns alle in Köln
zur Gründung der ‘Neuen Rheinischen Zeitung’ zusammen. Weerth übernahm das Feuilleton,
und ich bezweifle, ob je eine andere Zeitung so ein lustiges und schneidiges Feuilleton hatte”
(MEW XXI, 6).
308

1848/49 darstellte” and “dass er den politischen Teil des Blattes aktiv mitgestaltet
hat” (2006, 182).
A reevaluation, similar to that which has been taking place regarding Weerth’s
important role in the journalistic project of the NRhZ, must also be undertaken
concerning his contribution to the development of a Marxist poetics of revolu-
tion. The description of revolution in analogy to dramatic genres was a shared
project that involved several Communist writers (Weerth, Freiligrath etc.) besides
the dioscuri, Marx and Engels. Neither was Marx the first political writer to depict
revolutionary events in the terms of opposing dramatic genres. Edmund Burke’s
polemic Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) casts the revolutionary events
as a dramatic spectacle that vacillates between sublime tragedy, low comedy, and
melodrama. For Burke this revolution is staged as “a monstrous tragicomic scene”
that evokes within the spectator the following conflicting emotions: “alternate con-
tempt and indignation; alternate laughter and tears; alternate scorn and horror”
(cf. 1969, 92-93).38 Similarly, Marx’s own – ideologically diametrically opposed –
poetics of revolution represents it as being staged alternately as a tragedy, comedy,
and farce.39
In “Einleitung Zur Kritik der Hegel’schen Rechts-Philosophie” (1844), the trans-
formation that occurs in the repetition of history is still described as a shift from
the dramatic genre of tragedy to that of comedy, not farce. Nevertheless, we already
find a similar, dialectic relation between the first-time event that enfolds as tragedy
and its parodic, anachronistic repetition that is acted out as comedy. As Marx as-
serts, however, the German state comedy, in spite of being a flagrant anachronism,
at the same time contains an important lesson for the other modern European
states as it unveils the historicity of the limited bourgeois notion of freedom, of

38 For a study of the pivotal role that aesthetic categories play in Burke’s ideology of revolution,
see Furniss 1993. Another book that engages with Burke’s political aesthetic is Reid 1985. In
contrast to Furniss’ thorough study that grounds Burke’s aesthetic firmly in his ideology, Reid
overemphasises the aesthetic dimension of Burke’s pamphlet. He thus runs the risk of disregard-
ing Burke’s ideological tenets. He claims for instance “that Burke perceives the French Revolu-
tion in esthetic terms” (1985, 38) and not primarily in sociopolitical terms which he then casts
into aesthetic analogies.
39 Marx knew Burke’s writings. He engages very critically with his conservative socio-political and
socioeconomic views in the first volume of Das Kapital. There he dismisses him as a “Sykophant,
der im Sold der englischen Oligarchie den Romantiker gegenüber der Französischen Revolution
spielte,” as “durch und durch ordinärer Bourgeois” (MEW XXIII, 788, note). However, as far
as I can see, there does not exist any study that deals with Marx’s critique of Burke, let alone one
that compares and contrasts their respective poetics of revolution.
 309

being personal and political, but not universal and social. This limited notion of
freedom constitutes “der versteckte Mangel des modernen Staates”:

Der Kampf gegen die deutsche Gegenwart ist der Kampf gegen die Ver-
gangenheit der modernen Völker, und von den Reminiscenzen dieser Ver-
gangenheit werden sie noch immer belästigt. Er lehrreich für sie, das ancien
régime, das bei ihnen seine Tragödie erlebte, als deutschen Revenant seine Ko-
mödie spielen zu sehen. Tragisch war es solange es die präexistirende Gewalt
der Welt, die Freiheit dagegen ein persönlicher Einfall […] Das moderne
ancien régime ist nur mehr der Komödiant einer Weltordnung, deren wirk-
liche Helden gestorben sind. Die letzte Phase einer weltgeschichtlichen Ge-
stalt ist ihre Komödie. Die Götter Griechenlands, die schon einmal tragisch
zu Tode verwundet waren im gefesselten Prometheus des Aeschylus mußten
noch einmal komisch sterben in den Gesprächen Lucians (MEGA II, 173
& 174; Marx’s emphasis)

This antithesis of tragedy and comedy has changed to one of tragedy and farce
in Der achtzehnte Brumaire des Louis Bonaparte (1852), which traditionally has
been the starting point for discussing Marx’s poetics of revolution. A further piv-
otal shift has been that Marx now applies the antithetical dramatic genres not to
state forms but to the revolutionary process itself. Analysing and dissecting the
revolutions of 1848/49 and their aftermath in this seminal work, Marx pointedly
casts the political spectacle that the bourgeoisie was staging during these years as
a farcical repetition of the tragedy of the French Revolution. History repeats itself
and in doing so, the genre in which it is enacted changes from tragedy to farce.40
As Marx maintains, the history of the European bourgeois revolutions has been
characterised by such a paradigm shift. The French Revolution was acted out “als
große Tragödie,” whereas the bourgeois revolutions of 1848/49 were staged “als
lumpige Farce.”41 The characters of the former revolutionary drama reappear as
their ludicrous epigones, as parodies in the latter play. The petty revolutionaries of
1848/49 substitute the revolutionary heroes of the French Revolution. Even the

40 For a discussion of the cultural-political and philosophical implications of this view of history as
repetition, see Saïd 1976.
41 Some of the most popular contemporary plays on the Austrian and German Revolution of
1848/49, such as Nestroy’s Freiheit in Krähwinkel (1848), Lady und Schneider, Judith und Hol-
ofernes (1849), belong to the dramatic genre of the farce. However, in contrast to Marx, Nestroy
in his farces suggests that all social classes are shown to stage the revolution as a farce, not merely
the bourgeoisie. For criticism that engages with the depiction of revolution as farce in Nestroy,
see for instance Berghaus 1977 & 1985, MacKenzie 1985 & 2001, Perraudin 2000, 101-132,
and Häusler, 1987, 94-101.
310

bold counterrevolutionary coup d’état of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1799 is repli-

cated: by its shabby reenactment in Louis Bonaparte’s counterrevolutionary coup
d’état in 1851. While the former displayed signs of geniality, its repetition shows
nothing but general idiocy:

Hegel bemerkt irgendwo, daß alle großen weltgeschichtlichen Thatsachen

und Personen sich so zu sagen zweimal ereignen. Er hat vergessen hinzuzu-
fügen: das eine Mal als große Tragödie, das andre Mal als lumpige Farce.
Caussidiere für Danton, Louis Blanc für Robespierre, die Montagne von
1848-51 für die Montagne von 1793-95 und der Londoner Konstabler42 mit
dem ersten besten Dutzend Schulden beladener Lieutenants für den kleinen
Korporal [Napoleon Bonaparte] mit seiner Tafelrunde von Marschällen!
Der achtzehnte Brumaire des Idioten für den achtzehnten Brumaire des
Genies! Und dieselbe Karikatur in den Umständen, unter denen die zweite
Auflage des achtzehnten Brumaire herausgegeben wird. (MEGA XI, 96)

Far from representing merely a brilliant aperçu, this passage is indeed crucial for
Marx’s poetics of revolution. It contains the kernel of Marx’s wider view of the
European Revolutions of 1848/49. This view is not limited to the events in France,
but also applies significantly to the German Revolution. With its deep-reaching
socio-political implications it is not sufficient to regard this passage solely as a clue
to the rhetorical mode of Marx’s representation of the events from the February
Revolution 1848 to Bonaparte’s coup in December 1851. Hayden White, who has
done groundbreaking work on the literary and rhetoric ‘emplotment’ of historiog-
raphy, reduces the philosophical and socio-ideological complexity of the opening
passages of Marx’s essay to a question of the mode of literary representation. As he
maintains, “Marx’s problem was a literary one; he had to present ‘what really hap-
pened’ in a convincing narrative” which he found in “the mode of Satire” (White
1973, 320 & 321). It is true that Marx’s essay is written very much in the tradi-
tion of literary satires (see e.g. Hörmann 2007a). Moreover, Marx represents the
farcical repetition of the original events as a satiric representation, a “Karikatur,” of
the original ones. Yet what White largely ignores are the seminal ideological tenets
that Marx expresses through his satiric depiction of revolution degenerating from
tragedy to farce.43 Even more grave is that critics often refuse to acknowledge that
42 Marx alludes here to the fact that in April 1848, during the time of the major Chartist dem-
onstrations in London, Louis Bonaparte (the later French Emperor Napoleon III) enlisted as
one of the many thousands of ‘special constables.’ The British Government recruited them to
prevent civil unrest and stop the European revolutions from spreading to Britain.
43 This one-sided emphasis on the formal instead of the ideological implications of Marx’s poet-
ics of revolution in Der achtzehnte Brumaire characterises not only White’s account, but most
 311

the principal antithesis of Marx’s poetics of revolution, as he sketches it out in his

1848/49 writings and in Der achtzehnte Brumaire, is not so much between tragedy
and comedy as between tragedy and farce.44
As I will show, Marx’s poetics of revolution is closely linked to the concepts
of political and social revolution. Indeed Der achtzehnte Brumaire forms a scath-
literature written on this topic. Commenting on the passage I have quoted above, John Paul
Riquelme insists that it “is self-reflexive in its focus on the relationship of Marx’s writing to a
philosophical tradition, to a literary tradition of genres, and to a repetition in time” (1980, 58),
but fails to delineate the ideological importance of these references. In respect to the dramatic
genres in Der achtzehnte Brumaire he is even more obsessed with solely formal distinctions when
he differentiates not only “Tragedy” and “Farce” (calling the latter also “significative comedy”),
but further argues that Marx dialectically syntheses them to form another dramatic genre, which
he confusingly terms “Comedy (absolute comedy or tragicomedy)” (see 1980, 67-72). In my
opinion, such schematic neo-structuralist categories contribute little towards understanding the
sophisticated ideology of Marx’s poetics of revolution. Thomas Kamber (1996) also investigates
the significance of tragedy for Marx. He is more concerned with Marx as a tragic hero, with the
“‘tragic Marx’“ (cf. 105), than with the role that the poetological category of tragedy plays in his
oeuvre and in his theory of revolution. Nevertheless, he accurately claims that in Der achtzehnte
Brumaire Marx’s “mixing of political analysis and tragedy reaches a crescendo as his entire de-
scription of the events in France is characterized in terms of the mimetic processes of drama”
(1996, 104). Yet, focusing solely on the notion of tragedy, Kamber misses the importance of its
antithesis, the revolutionary farce. A further investigation into the role of tragedy and farce in
Der achtzehnte Brumaire can be found in Zvi Tauber’s essay (2000). He tries to sketch out paral-
lels and differences between the role that tragedy and farce play in Hegel’s and Marx’s philoso-
phy of history. While Tauber largely fails in this endeavour, Christian Iber (2011) shows – very
convincingly – how Marx draws upon Hegel’s notions of tragedy and farce and, at the same
time, radically transforms them. Earlier, Wolfgang Fietkau had already analysed and discussed
Marx’s adaptation of Hegel’s dramatic model of history (1978, 127-217). In Modern Tragedy
Raymond Williams comes with the following, extremely succinct, assertion of how Marx took
up Hegel’s conception of tragedy: “Under the influence of Marx […] the objective character of
the history of the spirit was at once reaffirmed and transformed. The conflict of ethical forces,
and their resolution by a higher force, were seen in social and historical terms. Social develop-
ment was seen as necessarily contradictory in character, and tragedy occurs at those points where
the conflicting forces must, by their inner nature, take action, and carry the conflict through to a
transformation. As in his more general response to Hegel, Marx took a description of a spiritual
process and made it a description of a social process” (1966, 35). For the only brief comparison
of Williams’ and Marx’s poetics of revolution, see Jones 2006b, 253-256.
44 For instance Jacques Derrida claims that Der achtzehnte Brumaire is structured by the antithesis
“between tragedy and comedy” (1996, 113). Critics seem to overlook that there exists a distinc-
tion between farce and comedy. For example, Wolfgang Fietkau even mentions both genres, but
then tacitly treats them as the same: “Marx hatte, als er den 18. Brumaire des dritten Napoleons
nicht nur im Fanfarenton der Einleitung als Farce bezeichnete, sondern auch in der Szenenfolge
der Darstellung als Komödie vor Augen führte, gewagt, an die als Revolutionsdrama verstanden
Klassenkämpfe, eine Prognose, eine Erwartung zu knüpfen” (1978, 127; my emphasis). For the
same error, see further Pormann 1990, 167 and Leiteritz 1994, 44.
312

ing satire of the bathos of bourgeois political revolution at the edge of the dawn-
ing age of proletarian social revolution. The recollection of the pathos of previous
bourgeois revolutions, most notably the French Revolution, reveals the apparent
anachronism of the actions of the bourgeoisie in 1848/49. From Marx’s historical-
materialist perspective, the main difference between 1789-1799 and 1848-1851
lies in the fact that the French Revolution had not only a political but also a pro-
nounced social dimension. Marking the turning point from an aristocratic-feudal
to a bourgeois-capitalist society, it tackled both the socio-political and socioeco-
nomic tasks of its time, whereas the bourgeois political revolutions of 1848/49
completely failed in this respect. Instead, the revolutionaries of 1848/49 invoked
the heroic ghosts of the past when they anachronistically tried to imitate the politi-
cal struggles of past bourgeois revolutions. Due to the repetitive structure of histo-
ry and the way that tradition and events of the past have conditioned the present,45
all previous bourgeois revolutionary movements also resorted to conjuring up “die
Geister der Vergangenheit,” to borrowing past “Namen, Schlachtparole, Kostüme.”
However, when they recalled the past, they performed “in dieser altehrwürdigen
Verkleidung und mit dieser erborgten Sprache die neue Weltgeschichtsszene” (cf.
MEGA XI, 97). This new scene in world history constituted laying the foundation
for its socioeconomic system of bourgeois society and capitalism. This is seen as
the achievement of the British Revolutions of the 17th century, and most of all, of
the French Revolution.
Marx regards the French Revolution as a social revolution that was acted out
with youthful vigour “auf der Höhe der großen geschichtlichen Tragödie,” as he
insists at the beginning of Der achtzehnte Brumaire. Its protagonists, it heroes, es-
tablished not only a republican state, but also gave birth to bourgeois society. This
status as a bourgeois social revolution distinguishes it from 1848/49:

Bei der Betrachtung jener weltgeschichtlichen Todtenbeschwörungen

[1789-1814 und 1848-1851] zeigt sich sofort ein springender Unterschied.
Camille Desmoulins, Danton, Robespierre, St. Just, Napoleon, die He-
roen wie die Parteien und die Masse der alten französischen Revolution
vollbrachten in dem römischen Kostüme und mit römischen Phrasen die
Aufgabe ihrer Zeit, die Entfesselung und Herstellung der modernen bür-
gerlichen Gesellschaft. Die Einen schlugen den feudalen Boden in Stücke

45 Marx regards the conditioning (but not determination) of present human action through the past
as a fundamental law of all history up to the present time: “Die Menschen machen ihre eigene
Geschichte, aber sie machen sie nicht aus freien Stücken unter selbstgewählten, sondern unter
unmittelbar vorhandenen, gegebenen und überlieferten Umstände. Die Tradition aller todten
Geschlechter lastet wie ein Alp auf dem Gehirne der Lebenden” (MEGA XI, 96-97).
 313
und mähten die feudalen Köpfe ab, die darauf gewachsen waren. Der Andre
[Napoleon] schuf im Innern von Frankreich die Bedingungen, in denen erst
die freie Konkurrenz entwickelt, das parzellirte Grundeigenthum ausgebeu-
tet, die industrielle Produktivkraft der Nation verwandt werden konnte [...]
(MEGA XI, 97; Marx’s emphasis)

The revolutionaries of the French Revolution were acting out at an avant-garde

revolutionary drama, when they aimed to overthrow both the contemporary ruling
class, the aristocracy, and its socioeconomic system, i.e. feudalism. By achieving
their goals, they provided the basis for the bourgeoisie to become the ruling class
itself and capitalism the dominant socioeconomic system across the entire Western
world. It radicalised the socioeconomic relations, which also meant discarding the
ideological illusions that veil exploitation under feudalism. As Marx and Engels
insist in Das Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei (February 1848), through this
social revolution the bourgeoisie “hat an die Stelle der mit religiösen und politisch-
en Illusionen verhüllten Ausbeutung die offene, unverschämte, direkte, dürre Aus-
beutung gesetzt” (MEW IV, 464-465). This world-historic dimension places these
revolutionary transformations in sharp contrast to the bourgeois political revolu-
tions of 1848/49. The latter were entirely imitative and created hardly anything
new in world-historical terms since society and the socioeconomic system that this
class incorporated had already long been established as the dominant one. All the
bourgeois revolutionaries of 1848/49 produced were a myriad of ideological myths
and delusions of the grandeur of their actions.
Thus, in Der achtzehnte Brumaire, revolution as tragedy and revolution as farce
are not merely separated by “the difference of a time between two masks” that
forms the dividing line “between tragedy and comedy [sic], between the revo-
lution on the march and what installs it in parody,” as Jacques Derrida errone-
ously claims (cf. 1994, 113). The key difference is that the French Revolution,
beneath its anachronistic political forms, harboured a deeper social content, while
the bourgeois actions of 1848/49 merely echoed the political forms of representa-
tion of 1789 to 1814. The period of 1848/49 mimics the political appearance of
the French Revolution, its anachronistic Roman-republican forms, but without
generating any new social content: 46

[…] die Revolution von 1789-1814 drappirte sich abwechselnd als rö-
mische Republik und als römisches Kaiserthum, und die Revolution von

46 For a deeper analysis of the fundamental role that this opposition of ‘social content’ versus ‘po-
litical form’ plays in Der achtzehnte Brumaire, see Hörmann 2009.
314
1848 wußte nichts Besseres zu thun, als hier 1789, dort die revolutionäre
Ueberlieferung von 1793-95 zu parodiren. (MEGA XI, 97)

Marx’s insistence here on parody adds yet another dimension to his poetics of revo-
lution. The tragedy of the French Revolution was followed by its parody, the farce
of the bourgeois revolution of 1848 in a manner analogous to Athenian drama. In
the ancient dramatic spectacles, tragedy was followed by satyrical plays that took
up the former’s tragic plot.47 Marx argues in a surprising dialectical twist that this
function of 1848/49 to 1851 as a satirical counter-drama to 1789-1814 is key,
since it transforms the former from a mere regression in revolutionary history to
a meaningful stage in the move towards proletarian revolution. As parody and
antithesis of the French Revolution, the seemingly worthless bourgeois revolutions
of 1848 have revealed the ideological shortcomings, illusion, and self-deceptions
of the former. A principal shortcoming is that the French Revolution claimed that
it could lead to an emancipation of the whole of society, while in reality the bour-
geois notion of freedom – in particular in its liberal interpretation as economic
freedom – only justified the even more reckless exploitation of the lower classes.
In Marx’s view, only proletarian social revolution is capable of achieving the goal
of universal human liberation. By contrast, any claims of universal liberation that
the bourgeois social revolution has stake in are illusory, a delusion about its limited
notion of freedom achieved by the histrionic spectacle it stages. It is exactly for this
reason that it needs the pathos of elevated tragedy that is caricatured by the bathos
of the lowly farce. In the French Revolution the phobos inducing elements of trag-
edy such as terror function as ideological delusions to hide its limited bourgeois
social content:

Aber unheroisch, wie die bürgerliche Gesellschaft ist, hatte es jedoch des
Heroismus bedurft, der Aufopferung, des Schreckens, des Bürgerkriegs und
der Völkerschlachten, um sie auf die Welt zu setzen. Und ihre Gladiatoren
fanden in den klassisch strengen Ueberlieferungen der römischen Republik
die Ideale und die Kunstformen, die Selbsttäuschungen, deren sie bedurf-
ten, um den bürgerlich beschränkten Inhalt ihrer Kämpfe sich selbst zu
verbergen und ihre Leidenschaft auf der Höhe der großen geschichtlichen
Tragödie zu erhalten. (MEGA XI, 97-98)

The perceived sublimity of the actions of the bourgeois revolutionary disguises the
fact that the fundamental transformations of society from feudalism to bourgeois

47 As for instance P. E. Easterling points out, in the Dyonisiac dramatic festival, “tragedy […] was
inseparable from satyr drama” (1997, 37).
 315

capitalism are enacted on a different, less spectacular stage. In the last instance not
even the larger-than-life figure of Napoleon I is the real general of the bourgeoisie,
but “ihre wirklichen Heerführer saßen hinter dem Comptoirtisch” (MEGA XI,
97).
To simplify slightly, the main distinguishing feature between these two genres
of revolution, tragedy and farce, consists of the fact that the action of the revolu-
tionary tragedy unfolds both on a political and social level, whereas the plot of the
revolutionary farce is largely limited to politics. Ironically, however, the actors in
the revolutionary farce believe they are enacting great tragedy and establishing a
novel system of society. Consequently, they are even less conscious of the limita-
tions of the play they stage than the one staging the revolutionary tragedy. Mis-
taking themselves for the heroes in a great revolutionary tragedy, the actors in the
revolutionary farce imagine themselves as enacting a new scene in the social history
of the world, while they merely perform a mimetic and parodistic spectacle.

The Bathos of the German Revolutionary Farce of 1848/49

For Marx, these characteristics of the revolutionary farce – its limited political
content, its anachronistic nature, as well as the delusions of its actors regarding the
importance of their role – apply not just to the French but also to the entire Eu-
ropean bourgeois revolutionary movement of 1848/49. Due to the socio-political
belatedness of Germany, the bourgeois German Revolution of 1848/49 constitutes
an even more pathetic and anachronistic parody of previous bourgeois social revo-
lutions (the French Revolution and the English Revolutions of the 17th century)
than its French equivalent. This view becomes evident already in Marx’s writings
during the revolution, in particular in the article series “Die Bourgeoisie und die
Kontrerevolution” in the NRhZ. While the English and French Revolution were
at the vanguard of social transformation as their fundamental political changes
hailed the dawn of a new social order for Europe, the German Revolution of 1848
merely meant a long overdue political change in one of Europe’s political backwa-
ters: the victory of the already socio-economically dominant class over an outdated
political order.48 As Marx suggests in the lead article in the NRhZ (No. 169) on 15
December 1848:

48 “Die Revolutionen von 1648 und 1789 waren keine englischen und französischen Revolutionen,
sie waren Revolutionen europäischen Stils. Sie waren nicht der Sieg einer bestimmten Klasse der
Gesellschaft über die alte politische Ordnung; sie waren die Proklamation der politischen Ordnung
für die neue europäische Gesellschaft. Die Bourgeoisie siegte in ihnen; aber der Sieg der Bourgeoisie
316
Die Februarrevolution [1848 in Paris] hatte das konstitutionelle Königtum
in der Wirklichkeit und die Bourgeoisherrschaft in der Idee abgeschafft. Die
preußische Märzrevolution sollte das konstitutionelle Königtum in der Idee
und die Bourgeoisherrschaft in der Wirklichkeit schaffen. Weit entfernt, eine
europäische Revolution zu sein, war sie nur die verkümmerte Nachwirkung
einer europäischen Revolution in einem zurückgebliebenen Lande. Statt
ihrem Jahrhundert voraus, war sie hinter ihrem Jahrhundert um mehr als
ein halbes Jahrhundert zurück. [...] Es handelte sich nicht um die Herstel-
lung einer neuen Gesellschaft, sondern um die Berliner Wiedergeburt der
zu Paris verstorbenen Gesellschaft. […] Während 1648 und 1789 das un-
endliche Selbstgefühl hatten, an der Spitze der Schöpfung zu stehn, bestand
der Ehrgeiz der Berliner 1848 dann, einen Anachronismus zu bilden. Ihr
Licht glich dem Lichte der Sterne, das uns Erdenbewohnern erst zukömmt,
nachdem die Körper, die es ausgestrahlt, schon 100.000 von Jahren erlo-
schen sind. Die preußische Märzrevolution war im kleinen, wie sie alles
im kleinen war, ein solcher Stern für Europa. Ihr Licht war das Licht eines
längst verwesten Gesellschaftsleichnams. (MEW VI, 108; Marx’s emphasis)

The Prussian bourgeois revolution constituted a blatant anachronism in political

terms, too, when it attempted to establish, after the March Revolution, a consti-
tutional monarchy whose concepts had received their mortal blow through the
overthrow of Louis Philippe in the February Revolution. However, the major in-
stance of dramatic irony lies in the social naivety that the actors share with their
bourgeois revolutionary French counterparts. The German attempt to establish
the unchallenged rule of the bourgeoisie resembles the pan-European farcical at-
tempt to resurrect a dead and decaying social body, “eines längst verwesten Gesells-
chaftsleichnams,” as Marx implies through a complex and extended metaphor that
hyperbolically likens the Prussian ideal of bourgeois society to the light of a dead
and extinct star. As such, the even more apparent delusions of German bourgeoise
also illuminate the pretensions of the French bourgeoisie to stage world history
in its revolutionary actions of 1848. The act of dissecting the diminutive German
bourgeois revolution magnifies the farcical errors in the judgment of the entire
European bourgeoisie.
The same dialectical relationship to the European development also applies to
Marx’s assertion that German revolutionary bourgeoisie has become an actor in
a revolutionary farce. In 1848, both the German and French bourgeoisie inade-
quately tried to establish an unchallenged rule of the bourgeoisie in a revolution in

war damals der Sieg einer neuen Gesellschaftsordnung [...] In der preußischen Märzrevolution nichts
von alledem”(MEW VI, 107 & 108 Marx’s emphasis).
 317

which its role was anything but heroic. Its haphazard alliance with the aristocracy
paralysed the German bourgeoisie and precluded the possibility of action both
against the counterrevolutionary forces and the revolutionary proletariat.
In contrast to the bourgeoisie, the proletariat had become a main actor in the
revolutionary drama by forcefully articulating its separate social interests. This view
becomes perhaps most obvious in the following sarcastically satirical passage from
the same editorial by Marx:

Die deutsche Bourgeoisie hatte sich so träg, feig und langsam entwickelt,
daß im Augenblicke, wo sie gefahrdrohend dem Feudalismus und Absolu-
tismus gegenüberstand, sie selbst sich gefahrdrohend gegenüber das Prole-
tariat erblickte und alle Fraktionen des Bürgertums, deren Interessen und
Ideen dem Proletariat verwandt sind. Und nicht nur eine Klasse hinter sich,
ganz Europa sah sie feindlich vor sich. Die preußische Bourgeoisie war
nicht, wie die französische von 1789, die Klasse, welche die ganze moderne
Gesellschaft den Repräsentanten der alten Gesellschaft, dem Königtum und
dem Adel, gegenüber vertrat [...], sondern [...] eine nicht zum Durchbruch
gekommene Schichte des alten Staats. Sie war zu einer Art von Stand he-
rabgesunken, ebenso ausgeprägt gegen die Krone als gegen das Volk, oppo-
sitionslustig gegen beide, unentschlossen gegen jeden ihrer Gegner einzeln
genommen, [...] Phrasen statt Ideen, eingeschüchtert vom Weltsturm, den
Weltsturm exploitierend – Energie nach keiner Richtung, Plagiat nach allen
Richtungen, gemein, weil sie nicht originell war, originell in der Gemein-
heit – [...] ohne weltgeschichtlichen Beruf – ein vermaledeiter Greis, der
sich dazu verdammt sah, die ersten Jugendströmungen eines robusten Volks
in seinem eigenen altersschwachen Interesse zu leiten und abzuleiten – ohn’
Aug! ohn’ Ohr! ohn’ Zahn, ohn’ alles – so fand sich die preußische Bourgeoisie
nach der Märzrevolution am Ruder des preußischen Staates. (MEW VI,
108-109; Marx’s emphasis)

Marx suggests in this passage that the reason the bourgeoisie plays such a promi-
nent part in the German revolutionary farce is that it is no longer the class that acts
at the height of the tragedy of world history. Anachronistically forming an order
of society (“Stand”) rather than a genuine class, it is “ohne weltgeschichtlichen
Beruf.” In truth, the proletariat now holds this profession. All across Europe, stir-
ring in its “ersten Jugendströmungen,” the proletariat takes over the tragic-revolu-
tionary part from the bourgeoisie that has turned into a mere “vermaledeiter Gre-
is.” The bourgeoisie has become a shadow, an actual parody of its former youthful
self, as Marx suggests especially effectively through an allusion to Jaques’ famous
speech ‘The Seven Ages of Men’ from Shakespeare’s comedy As You Like It (1600).
318

Slightly misquoting Shakespeare, Marx implies that the bourgeoisie has reached its
“letzte[n] Akt, mit dem / Die seltsam wechselnde Geschichte schließt,”49 the senile
stage which is a parody of its youth: “zweite Kindheit, gänzliches Vergessen, / Ohn’
Augen, ohne Zahn, Geschmack und alles” (II, 7; Shakespeare 1964, 39).
In 1848/49 the bourgeoisie has reached the low point of its revolutionary ca-
reer, Marx implies. Its decline had started already soon after the French Revolution
that created the basis for capitalism’s victory. While – as Marx and Engels insist in
Das Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei – the “Bourgeoisie hat in der Geschichte
eine höchst revolutionäre Rolle gespielt” (MEW IV, 464), it now only plays a
ridiculous part in the revolutionary farce that it stages. With the successful con-
clusion of its radical socioeconomic revolution the bourgeoisie has exhausted its
socio-revolutionary potential.
At the same time, however, the bourgeoisie’s radical transformation of the
economic and the societal system has laid the foundations for a new revolution-
ary constellation to emerge in the drama of world history. Establishing reckless
exploitation of a dominated class as the basis of its socioeconomic system, the
bourgeoisie has in effect been producing a new class that has become the socio-
revolutionary antagonist of the bourgeois ruling class: the proletariat. Claiming
that among all the classes, “welche heutzutage der Bourgeoisie gegenüberstehen, ist
nur das Proletariat eine wirklich revolutionäre Klasse” (MEW IV, 472; my empha-
sis) the proletariat forms the sole protagonist of the revolutionary tragedy. It is the
proletarian social revolution that will form its climax. It will occur – as Marx had
suggested earlier in the “Einleitung Zur Kritik der Hegel’schen Rechts-Philosophie”
(1844) – at the point when the relationship of the classes to each other is no longer
“episch,” as in Germany of 1844, but “dramatisch” (cf. MEGA II, 180). By an epic
class relationship he understands that no direct, clear-cut class confrontation takes
places. While the dramatic is limited to just two antagonistic classes opposing each
other, a multitude of various class confrontations instead happens simultaneously
in Germany in 1844.50 A dramatic class relationship for Marx is one in which two
49 The multiple senses that the term “history” here carries – as the sequence of past, present, and
future events, history-play and life-story – emerge much more clearly in the English original of
Jaques’ speech: “Last scene of all, / That ends this strange, eventful history, / Is second childish-
ness and mere oblivion, / Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything” (II, 7, ll. 162-165;
Shakespeare 1997, 1623).
50 Marx insists that in Germany “jede Klasse, sobald sie den Kampf mit der über ihr stehenden
Klasse beginnt, in den Kampf mit der unter ihr stehenden verwickelt ist. Daher befindet sich
das Fürstenthum im Kampf gegen das Königthum, der Bureaukrat im Kampf gegen den Adel,
der Bourgeois im Kampf gegen sie alle, während der Proletarier schon beginnt, sich im Kampf
gegen den Bourgeois zu befinden” (MEGA II, 181). Thus in German society in 1844 no class
 319

classes are directly opposed as protagonist and antagonist in one single action: a
desideratum for the tragic genre that Aristotle famously outlines in his Poetics. In
chapter 18 he demands: “Man […] darf kein episches Handlungsgefüge zu einer
Tragödie machen (unter ‘episch’ verstehe ich Handlungsvielfalt), wie wenn jemand
die gesamte Handlung der Ilias behandeln wollte” (1994, 59). To achieve a dra-
matic effect “die Nachahmung einer einzigen, und zwar einer ganzen Handlung”
is vital (chapter 8; 1994, 29). Marx holds a similar view in his poetics of revolu-
tion. The direct standoff between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat is a most
dramatic effect that also simplifies the plot structure of the revolutionary drama.
In Das Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei Marx and Engels prophesy that this
moment is approaching rapidly when modern revolutionary tragedy comes close
to the tragic ideal of unity of action:

Unsere Epoche, die Epoche der Bourgeoisie, zeichnet sich jedoch dadurch
aus, daß sie die Klassengegensätze vereinfacht hat. Die ganze Gesellschaft
spaltet sich mehr und mehr in zwei große feindliche Lager, in zwei große,
einander direkt gegenüberstehende Klassen: Bourgeoisie und Proletariat.
(MEW IV, 463)

Marx and Engels further believe that in 1848, even in Germany, the relationship
between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie is so highly polarised that the proletar-
ian social revolution is imminent. Marx had until then seen this as severely lagging
behind most European countries in its socioeconomic development. Accurately
realising that “Deutschland am Vorabend einer bürgerlichen Revolution steht,”
they wrongly predict that after the German bourgeois political revolution the pro-
letarian social revolution will immediately follow. The German bourgeois revolu-
tion was supposed to occur “mit einem viel weiter entwickelten Proletariat” than
existed in France of the 18th century (cf. MEW IV, 493). Again using a metaphor
from the semantic field of drama, they proclaim that “die deutsche bürgerliche
Revolution also nur das unmittelbare Vorspiel einer proletarischen Revolution sein
kann” (493). The bourgeois revolution is the prologue of the main revolution-
ary action, when the masses (the chorus) take centre stage. This constitutes an
has the potential to play at the level of drama of world history, but instead its classes are stag-
ing a second-rate play that is already deeply anachronistic, “antiquirt” as it is being performed:
“die Gelegenheit einer großen Rolle [ist] immer vorüber [...], bevor sie vorhanden war” (181).
Stathis Kouvelakis relates Marx’s understanding of epic both to “Hegel’s critique of the Homeric
paradigm” (2003, 319) and Brecht’s epic theatre. As he argues, with his unconventional use of
stylistic devices Marx aims for a similar alienation effect within the recipient as Brecht does with
his theatric devices: to “give up his routine perceptions of the world and to view it as something
strange” (320).
320

important revision of the role of the chorus in Greek tragedy, since in the Greek
theory and practice of tragedy, the chorus, in spite of being an integral part of the
action, does not decisively influence the outcome of the drama. As Aristotle defines
it in chapter 12 of his Poetics, the prologue is the whole part of the tragedy “vor
dem Einzug des Chors” (cf. 1994, 37). In chapter 18, he demands that one has
to assign to the chorus an acting role: the chorus “muß Teil des Ganzen sein und
sich an der Handlung beteiligen” (1994, 59). For instance, in the earlier forms of
Greek tragedy, actors stepped out of the chorus and performed individual parts.
Thus, as Raymond Williams insists in Modern Tragedy, Greek “choral tragedy” is
unique insofar as the “specific and varying relations between chorus and actors are
its true dramatic relations” (1966, 18). However, in contrast to Marx’s poetics of
revolution, the chorus in Greek tragedy does not decisively change the course of
the action. With Marx, the masses as the chorus act as the protagonist, taking the
lead role in the revolutionary drama.
When Marx emphasises that the proletariat forms a chorus which plays the
pivotal role in the revolutionary drama he was not the first German revolutionary
author to do so. In article IX of Französische Zustände (1833) Heine compares the
contemporary political drama to the drama of Greek tragedy. Like Marx, Heine
employs the chorus metaphor to express that the ‘great’ individuals are no longer
the principal actors on the political stage but the masses. Yet unlike Marx, who
unequivocally embraces the proletariat as the modern revolutionary hero, Heine
seems to be torn between nostalgia for a sublime past and admiration for today’s
collective heroes such as those who died in the failed republican uprising in Paris in
June 1832, “den Helden der Rue-Saint Martin […], deren Namen niemand kennt,
die gleichsam anonym gestorben sind”:

Überhaupt scheint die Weltperiode vorbei zu sein, wo die Taten der einzel-
nen hervorragen; die Völker, die Parteien, die Massen selber sind die Helden
der neuern Zeit; die moderne Tragödie unterscheidet sich von der antiken
dadurch, daß jetzt die Chöre agieren und die eigentlichen Hauptrollen spie-
len, während die Götter, Heroen und Tyrannen, die früherhin die handeln-
den Personen waren, jetzt zu mäßigen Repräsentanten des Parteiwillens und
der Volkstat herabsinken, und zur schwatzenden Betrachtung hingestellt
sind, als Thronredner, als Gastmahlpräsidenten, Landtagsabgeordnete, Mi-
nister, Tribüne usw. (Heine 1994 III, 219)

Like Heine, Marx also draws upon main concepts of Greek tragedy and revises
them in the face of the contemporary socio-historical situation. As such, Marx’s
poetics of revolution represents much more than a straightforward application of
 321

Aristotle’s poetics to the contemporary revolutionary situation. It also constitutes

a major challenge both to conceived notions of the poetics of drama and revolu-
tion. One of the major revisions of Aristotle’s Poetics that Marx undertakes consists
in challenging any strict distinction between tragedy and other dramatic genres.
For him proletarian revolutionary action has the potential to transform tragedy
into a novel anti-tragic genre. As Marx and Engels claim in the Das Manifest der
Kommunistischen Partei, the advance of capitalism will not only cause increased
exploitation and proletarianization of the workers – as well as increase the wealth
of the bourgeoisie – but it will also lead to the eventual downfall of the bourgeoisie
and the simultaneous triumph of the revolutionary proletariat. Since through its
socioeconomic exploitative system, the bourgeoisie has been producing its own
“Totengräber,”51 its “Untergang und der Sieg des Proletariats sind gleich unver-
meidlich” (MEW IV, 474). Such – at least from a Marxist perspective – anti-tragic
resolution to the dramatic societal conflicts does not permit to speak any longer
of tragedy in a classic sense, in which the hero necessarily fails to resolve the tragic
conflict. Consequently, in this novel genre of revolutionary drama, which has tran-
scended its purely tragic nature, also the blindness of the bourgeoisie to its own
self-destructive actions (which Marx and Engels emphasise in Das Manifest der
Kommunistischen Partei) does not constitute an instance of “tragic irony” as Terry
Eagleton believes (2003, 241). As they presuppose that the true hero, the prole-
tariat, will enact an eventual anti-tragic resolution to the revolutionary drama, this
form of ‘dramatic irony’ can no longer be conceived within the established concept
of ‘tragic irony.’
A second vital characteristic of the Marx’s poetics of revolution is its pro-
nounced lack of a prescriptive and fixed set of rules as which Aristotle’s Poetics had
often been misinterpreted. Marx evolves and transforms his poetics of revolution
through a permanent dialectical process of self-reflection and self-critique based
on the contemporary events. The course of the revolutions of 1848s, for instance,
shattered the high hopes that a successful proletarian social revolution and, thus,
an anti-tragic resolution to the proletarian tragedy were imminent. The Marxists

51 It is conceivable that Marx and Engels here allude to the ‘gravedigger scene’ (V, 1) from Hamlet.
Commenting on the confident class consciousness of the socially low gravediggers – the stage di-
rections describe them as “Clowns” (i.e. peasants) (Shakespeare 1982, 376) – Hamlet highlights
the danger that the lower classes pose to the ruling class, the aristocracy. The robust peasants are
already treading on the heels of the courtiers who have become effeminate with decadence and
over-sophistication: “How absolute [strict] the knave is. We must speak by the card [accurately]
or equivocation will undo us. By the Lord, Horatio, this three years I have took note of it, the
age has grown so picked [refined] that the toe of the peasant comes so near the heel of the cour-
tier he galls his kibe [sore]” (V, I; ll. 133-138; Shakespeare 1982, 384).
322

reacted by transforming their poetics of revolution. The fact that the proletarian
social revolution either failed to happen (or, as in case of the Parisian June Insur-
rection, was utterly defeated) led to a revision of Marx’s revolutionary poetics.
Since all contemporary attempts to stage a proletarian social revolution ended in
catastrophe and not with the triumph of the hero as it is predicted in Das Manifest
der Kommunistischen Partei, these are later described as a tragic spectacle. As I will
illustrate later, such a view is strongly expressed by Marx’s famous editorial about
the June Insurrection (NRhZ No. 29/29 June 1848) that views the defeated Paris-
ian proletarians with strong pathos as the greatest tragic heroes of the entire revo-
lution, a verdict that is strongly reiterated in Der achtzehnte Brumaire. Marx here
compares this proletarian defeat with subsequent defeats of the various bourgeois
factions by the counterrevolutionary forces. For Marx, the only moment of truly
world-historic dimension in 1848 lies in the tragic defeat of the proletariat in the
failed social revolution in June 1848. This contrasts starkly with the farcical action
of the bourgeois political revolutions. As Marx suggests throughout his essay, the
earthshaking dimension of the June Insurrection (expressed through the metaphor
“Junierdbeben”) will haunt, as “das rothe Gespenst” (MEGA XI, 156), all subse-
quent events and lead to the victory of the counterrevolution:52

Mit dieser Niederlage tritt das Proletariat in den Hintergrund der revolu-
tionären Bühne. [...] Aber wenigstens erliegt es mit den Ehren des großen
weltgeschichtlichen Kampfes; nicht nur Frankreich, ganz Europa zittert vor
dem Junierdbeben, während die nachfolgenden Niederlagen der höheren
Klassen so wohlfeil erkauft werden, daß sie der frechen Uebertreibung der
siegenden Partei bedürfen, um überhaupt als Ereignisse passiren zu können,
und um so schmachvoller werden, je weiter die unterliegende Partei von der
proletarischen entfernt ist. (MEGA XI, 105; Marx’s emphasis)

4.2.2 The Farce of Chartism According to Weerth: The Betrayal of Britain’s

Socio-Revolutionary Proletariat in 1848

While from Marx’s perspective the June Insurrection marked the decisive turn-
ing point in the revolutionary drama of 1848/49, a first setback to the European
revolutionary momentum had happened several months earlier. Although it was

52 For the role of the spectre of the June Insurrection for the revolutionary poetics in Der achtzehnte
Brumaire, see Hörmann 2009.
 323

an infinitely less bloody repression of the potential proletarian social revolution

than the military defeat of the June Insurrection, which claimed the lives of several
thousand Parisian workers, Weerth in hindsight identifies the suppression of Char-
tist protests in London in April 1848 as the first turning point in the revolutionary
drama. For Weerth this was the first time in that year that the high drama of the
proletarian struggle is transformed into a bourgeois farce. In Paris in June 1848,
at least, the French workers were tragically routed by the bourgeois forces of the
French state, their declared class enemies. Ironically, in London in April 1848,
Weerth insists, it had been the leaders of the British working-class movement who
betrayed their followers and stopped a potential British Revolution in its tracks.
As I have shown in the previous subchapter, as early as December 1844 Weerth
had regarded the British proletarian revolution as imminent, an expectation his-
tory did not fulfil in 1848 or at any other time in the 18th and 19th centuries.53 In
1846, in an excerpt from an anonymous letter in the Gesellschaftsspiegel that is most
likely to have been taken from one of Weerth’s letters to Moses Heß, this revolu-
tion is still expected. Only its outbreak is postponed as the final sentence of the
excerpt suggests: “Allmälig steuern wir auf eine lustige Krise zu” (Heß 1971 II, 70).
Even after the outbreak of revolution in Paris, Vienna, and Berlin in the spring of
1848 he was still convinced that the start of the British proletarian revolution was
only a matter of weeks rather than months. As he declares optimistically in his first
correspondence article from London for the Kölnische Zeitung (31 March 1848):

Da geschehen plötzlich die Ereignisse in Paris, in Wien und Berlin, und

wie aus Wut, daß alle anderen Völker sie im Revolutionieren überbieten,
machen sich jetzt die Chartisten auf, um nicht hinter allen anderen zurück-
zubleiben. […] Da ist George Julian Harney, die Seele des “Northern Star”,
des Organ der Chartisten, der als England zuerst die Hand zur Verbrüde-
rung deutscher und britischer Arbeiter bot – er überbringt seinen Freunden
die Grüße der provisorischen Regierung der französischen Republik. Da ist
der Methodisten-Pfarrer Rayner Stephens von Stalybridge, der auf einem
Meeting in Manchester auseinandersetzte, daß man die ganze Stadt, ja ganz
England “mit einem Schwefelhölzchen über den Haufen werfen könne” – er
scheint seine Gefangenschaft in Knutsford vergessen zu haben und erinnert
die Arbeiter aufs neue daran, daß die Charta nur eine “Messer-und Gabel-
Frage” sei. […] Doch vor allen schwingt der gewaltige Feargus O’Connor
sein Banner, und Heere stampft er aus der Erde, wenn er sich an seine alte
Chartistengarde wendet […] (Weerth 1957 IV, 28-29)

53 For a discussion of this fact and possible reasons for it, see Royle 2000, 139-198.
324

As this article suggests, Weerth’s high hopes for a British proletarian revolution
rested both with the Chartist rank and file and his leaders. He seems to share the
views of the radical Methodist preacher and Chartist Rayner Stephens that Chart-
ism in focusing on the knife-and-fork question is a socio-revolutionary movement
and that Britain just lacks the final spark that would set off the British revolution.
In the unpublished essay “Geschichte der Chartisten von 1832 bis 1848,” that he
continued writing at least until early 1848, his views seem slightly more cautious
than in the above article in which he predicts with near certainty the outbreak of
revolution.54 However, Weerth still expects that the impressive “Schauspiel” (cf.
1957 III, 375) of Chartist agitation will eventually climax in a proletarian social
revolution. His hopes rest with their leader Feargus O’Connor, whom he enthusi-
astically praises as the champion of the people and as a dramatic impersonator of
its revolutionary spirit. Weerth states that O’Connor possesses the same character
traits as “das Volk, dieser gewaltige, ungeschliffene Riese.” He casts him as its mir-
ror image claiming that “in seinem O’Connor sieht das englische Volk sich selbst.
O’Connor ist das Volk in einer Person, ausgestattet mit all seinen Tugenden und
behaftet mit all seinen Lastern” (Weerth 1957 III, 310). O’Connor’s theatrical
skills become evident when Weerth portrays him acting out various roles: from
the sophisticated poet, “von Liebe lispelnd wie Heine und Hafis,” to the lowly
bawdy writer, “in barbarischen Zoten sich ergehend trotz Meister Franz Rabelais”
to the plebeian role when he acts “grob und plump gleich einem Shakespearschen
Stallknecht” (cf. 310-311). Most evidently, however, O’Connor’s function as a
dramatic impersonation of the proletariat’s revolutionary power becomes evident
in a depiction of one of his speeches (see 1957 III, 313-316). In it Weerth clearly
likens O’Connor’s performance on the rostrum to the enactment of a bloody revo-
lutionary battle, the “Gemetzel der Bataille” (314).
Weerth insists that it was due to his popular qualities that O’Connor man-
aged to be elected as the MP for Nottingham to the House of Commons in 1847.

54 Bernd Füllner has shown how Weerth’s view of the Chartists and their leader O’Connor changes
rapidly in the course of the articles he wrote for the Kölnische Zeitung and the Deutsche Zeitung
between March and April 1848. He points out the stark difference between the largely euphoric
tone of Weerth’s correspondence pieces in March and April 1848 and the sarcastic satire of
O’Connor in the NRhZ in 1849. He argues that the “eigentliche euphorische Phase in Georg
Weerths Revolutionsdarstellungen endet schließlich mit der London-Korrespondenz vom 14.
April in der Deutschen Zeitung.” He regards that this shift in the tenor of Weerth’s depiction of
the revolutionary events in 1848 as being motivated by his “Enttäuschung über den Ausgang
der revolutionär zugespitzten Ereignisse” in London (cf. 1999, 95). For an annotated version of
Weerth’s London correspondence articles for Die Deutsche Zeitung, which are missing in Kaiser’s
edition, see Füllner 1985 (1999, 93-95).
 325

There he acts as the representative of the lower classes and as a hero of Shakespear-
ean tragedy, “den man zwischen die Capulets und die Montagues stellte” (376),
as Weerth writes, quoting from an article from the Daily News from December
1847. Neither belonging to either of the two established parties, the Tories and the
Whigs, which are likened to the feuding houses in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet,
O’Connor is the sole genuine representative of the British people. Yet, in the end,
Weerth insists that even O’Connor will be unable to instigate social change on his
own. Only when the London proletariat on the streets begins a social revolution
will the social demands that O’Connor voices in his dramatic speeches in parlia-
ment be enacted. The concluding paragraph of “Die Geschichte der Chartisten”
expresses such a conviction:

Wird man seiner [O’Connors] mahnenden Stimme gehorchen? Vielleicht

ist es nötig, daß auch erst durch die Londoner Gassen der schreckliche Ruf
“aux armes!” erklingt,55 um seinen Forderungen den richtigsten Nachdruck
zu geben. (Weerth 1957 III, 376)

Weerth’s positive verdict on O’Connor, as the leader in the British proletariat’s

social struggles, did not survive the revolutions of 1848/49. By 1849 Weerth had
utterly changed his views on him, as the satire “Die Langeweile, der Spleen und die
Seekrankheit” proves (NRhZ, 6 to 29 March 1849). In a disrespectfully sarcastic
manner O’Connor is presented as a traitor not only to the Chartist movement,
but also to the cause of the proletarian social revolution. For Weerth it has become
obvious that O’Connor, like the villain in a drama, misled its hero, the proletariat.
Weerth insinuates that he was only acting the role of the champion of the prole-
tarian cause to increase his fame. His cowardly and treacherous stance turns the
British workers’ movement from being the most advanced player in the European
revolutionary tragedy into an actor in a “Farce,” as Weerth alleges. The principal
reason for this change of genre, Weerth identifies in O’Connor’s cowardly refusal
to use revolutionary force:

Klar ist es endlich, daß O’Connor zwar nicht wie der alte Dan [O’Connell]
das Volk für bares Geld verriet, daß er aber deswegen die ganze Bewegung
der englischen Arbeiter durch seinen allmächtigen Einfluß stets in eine Far-
ce verwandelte, weil er vor dem Äußersten zurückschreckte, weil er nicht
jenen offenen Kampf wagte, ohne den keine Bewegung der Welt zu einem
Resultat zu bringen ist. (Weerth 1957 IV, 230)

55 This sub-clause seems to allude to events of the Parisian February Revolution (22-24 February
1848) and thus suggests that Weerth finished his essay only after these events had taken place.
326

Repeating the action of his precursor and sponsor, the leader of the Irish Repeal
movement Daniel O’Connell, O’Connor also incurs “den Fluch” of his followers.
The moment in 1843, “als das Volk über sein [O’Connell’s] Treiben die Augen
öffnete” (cf. 1957 IV, 230) about the motives for opposing revolution as a means
to gain the repeal of the Union of Britain and Ireland, reoccurs in 1848 concern-
ing O’Connor and the Chartist rank and file.56 The British proletariat experiences
a profound anagnorisis vis-à-vis the true motives for O’Connor’s both current and
past refusal to condone revolutionary violence. It happens that his almighty sway
over Chartism, his will for absolute power over his proletarian followers, consti-
tutes the main reasons why the British proletarian social revolution had been fore-
stalled several times within the previous ten years. Through his repeated calls to
refrain from violence, he always managed to transform the socio-revolutionary stir-
rings of the British proletarian movement into a farce. Already during the Chartist
uprisings of 1839 in Wales and 1842 in Lancashire his moderate stance was more
than suspicious.

Image IV William Edward Kilburn “View of the Great Chartist Meeting on Kennington
Common” (10 April 1848) The Royal Collection © 2010 Her Majesty Queen
Elizabeth II
56 For an essay investigating views of O’Connell in the German Vormärz (including in Weerth’s
texts), see Bourke 1996.
 327

Yet it was in spring 1848 on the occasion of the Chartist mass meeting on 10 April
(estimates of the numbers assembled vary widely from 20,000 to 400,000)57 on
Kennington Common that O’Connor revealed his true colours. On this occasion
he showed to the world his own hypocrisy when he again discouraged revolution-
ary action:

Verdächtig war es, daß O’Connor hinüber nach Irland reiste, als im Jahre
1839 der Aufstand in Wales begann; verdächtig war es, daß er im Jahre
1842 nicht losschlug, als die Chartisten ganz Manchester besetzt und ganz
Lancashire in ihrer Hand hatten – aber zu einem bloßen Polterer sank der
große Agitator hinab, als endlich der Frühling von 1848 die revolutionäre
Bewegung von halb Europa brachte und als der “wilde Feargus” die Wut der
Arbeiter zu nichts anderem benutzte als zu jenem unglückseligen Meeting
des 10. April auf Kennington Common, wo er die schlagfertige Masse be-
schwor, keinen Tropfen Blut zu vergießen, und wo er in seiner Zeitung, im
“Northern Star”, erklärte, daß er nie wieder eine Nacht ruhig in seinem Bette
schlafen würde, wenn ein einziger Arbeiter durch die von ihm angefachte Bewe-
gung ums Leben komme. (Weerth 1957 IV, 230-231; italics in original)

Weerth is convinced that the meeting on Kennington Common had the poten-
tial to mark the first act of the high drama of the European proletarian social
revolution.58 Instead, O’Connor’s cheap intrigue, his honeyed words with which
he stopped “die schlagfertige Menge,” transformed this gathering into a pathetic
fiasco, into the first act of the revolutionary farce of 1848/49.59 When he swears to
57 Weerth himself, writing from London as the correspondent for the Kölnische Zeitung on 11
April 1848, points out the ideologically motivated discrepancies in the reports of the numbers
of demonstrators: “Die Zahl der Leute, welche sich gestern gegen das Verbot des Gouvern-
ments auf Kennington Common zusammenfanden, wird von der ‘Times’ auf 20000, von den
meisten Seiten auf 50000 bis 60000 Mann geschätzt” (1957 IV, 30). Malcom Chase argues that
O’Connor’s claim of a turnout of 400,000 was highly exaggerated, estimating the numbers of
demonstrators at around 150,000 people (2007, 302).
58 Historians have fiercely debated the question of how much a revolutionary threat the Chartist
gathering posed as well as which role O’Connor played in its failure. For a short survey of
Chartism in 1848 and the critical debate from the 19th century to the present, see Brown 1998,
104-113. See also Belchem 1982 & 2001, Saville 1987 and Royle 2000, 123-138.
59 Weerth’s assertion that a great historical opportunity had been missed and O’Connor had cow-
ardly betrayed the people was shared by some physical force Chartists on the day. The mixed-
race Chartist William Cuffay (who was later transported to Tasmania for his alleged involvement
in a planned uprising in August 1848) accused the entire Chartist Convention of being “a set
of cowardly humbugs” and “that Mr. O’Connor must have known all this before.” For him the
decision to call off the planned procession to Parliament was “rank cowardice” and hence, as
he asserted, “Mr O’Connor must never find fault with any one after this” (Anonymous 1848d,
328

his proletarian audience that he will never sleep soundly again if one single worker
is killed as a consequence of the movement he started, O’Connor is no longer the
great Shakespearean character he had appeared to be nor the presumed champion
and incarnation of the people. He possesses not even the greatness of a villain, but
sinks to a ham actor in a second-rate play.
This is also borne out by the actual speech at the demonstration that Weerth re-
fers to. O’Connor employs a highly sentimental rhetoric to emphasise the sacrifices
he made for his “children,” the Chartists. Warning them not to use any force, he
claims that if they resorted to violence, morally, they would no better than pick-
pockets. With great moralistic pathos, he pictures how deeply not only he would
suffer if any one of them were to be killed by his ‘fault,’ but also how deeply they
would suffer if their great patriarchal leader was to be killed by their ‘fault.’ His
repeated rhetorical questions suggest that he is firmly convinced that the victory of
the masses depends on his continued leadership of the Chartists:

You my friend, will show them we are Chartists, not pickpockets, and that we
will not jeopardise our cause by a single act of wickedness or folly. (Cheers.)
We, at least, have had our meeting. (Cheers.) The government have taken
possession of all the bridges. You know that I have all my life been a man of
courage, of firmness, and of resolution; but how should I rest in my bed this
night if I were conscious that there were widows awake, mourning for hus-
bands slain? (Hear.) How should I feel if I thought that by any act of mine
I had jeopardised the lives of thousands, and thus paralysed our movement?
(Hear, hear.) How, I ask, would you feel if you were conscious that you had
been parties to my death? What would be our trouble and our sorrow, how
great would be our loss! (Anonymous 1848c, 7)

Not merely from a Marxist angle, but also from the perspective of his earlier speech-
es in which O’Connor indicted the socioeconomic violence of capitalism that has
caused the death of thousands of workers,60 the hollow bourgeois hypocrisy of this
speech becomes evident. His ‘moral force’ arguments clash sharply with those of
‘physical force’ Chartists. Just days before the meeting, William Cuffay argued that
6). For a short summary of Cuffay’s life, including excerpts from his speeches, see Chase 2007,
303-311.
60 Weerth highlights O’Connor’s harsh indictment of the lethal consequences of capitalist exploit-
ative practices regarding the explosion in the Haswell Colliery. As I have pointed out earlier, in
“Proletarier in England” he reports that O’Connor at the end of his speech in Bradford told his
audience, “daß in den letzten Tagen, wiederum in den Bergwerken zu Haswell, durch Nachläs-
sigkeit der Grubenbesitzer, hundert Menschen auf einen Schlag ums Leben gekommen seien
und das Verdict wie gewöhnlich: ‘Visitation of God’ gelautet habe” (1845, 325).
 329

if Parliament rejected the Chartist mass petition, which called for the Six Points of
the Charter to be turned into law, this likely reaction should be considered as “a
declaration of war” and the Chartist “Executive should be prepared to lead on to
liberty or death” (quoted in Chase 2007, 304). Similarly, on 27 March at a French
Republican Banquet Julian Harney had warned that violent class struggles might
be unavoidable to achieve social equality and the emancipation of the proletariat:

The Equality I contend for may be established through the emancipation

and organisation of labour, without injustice to any men or set of men. If in
the future stages of the revolution violent class struggles should take place,
you may assure yourselves that such violence will not be the fault of the
people. (Anonymous 1848a, 2)

In contrast to Harney (who was dismissed as editor-in-chief of The Northern Star

by O’Connor following the Kennington Meeting), for Weerth O’Connor has re-
vealed himself as an impostor who has shabbily betrayed the revolutionary people.
Turning – to borrow Marx’s words from Der achtzehnte Brumaire – the potential
“große Tragödie” of proletarian social revolution into a “lumpige Farce,” O’Connor
essentially hindered the European socio-revolutionary momentum. Weerth im-
plies that he started the process of degradation that marked the European revo-
lutionary drama in 1848/49. There is only one point at which the revolutionary
plot genuinely reached the height of world-historic drama: the retarding moment
of the June Insurrection, when the Parisian workers rose up without being led by
any bourgeois figures.

4.2.3 Marx, Weerth, and the Farce of the German Bourgeoisie in 1848

The Marxists – Weerth and Marx foremost – identified the development of the
high revolutionary drama degenerating into a lowly farce all across Europe during
1848. For them the European revolutions had an element of revolutionary tragedy
while the proletariat achieved the initial victory over the old forces and in the fight
for social rights.61 However, the betrayal of the revolution at the hands of the bour-

61 Irrespective of their ideological differences, nearly all modern historians agree that proletarians
(workers, apprentices and journeymen) formed by far the largest faction in the street battles in
Berlin on 18 and 19 March 1848 (see for instance Siemann 1985, 68-69, Grab 1998, 7, Black-
bourn 2003, 107). Frank Lorenz Müller maintains that out of the “900 Berliner, die zwischen
dem 13. und 19.3. vom Militär getötet, verletzt oder verhaftet wurden, gehörten mehr als 85%
330

geoisie, the bourgeois self-destructive alliance with the old forces (most notably in
Paris, Vienna, Frankfurt and Berlin) in its clampdown on any proletarian protests
and its subsequent usurpation of the lead role in revolutionary drama led to the
action turning farcical.62
Analysing the course of the German Revolution in a series of articles in the
NRhZ in December 1848, Marx exposes the – in his opinion – utterly pathetic
role that the Prussian liberal bourgeoisie played in the German revolutionary farce.
This was made clear in its insistence on a constitutional monarchic system, a system
which the February Revolution had just abolished in France. With its monarchic
pretension, its ambition was “einen Anachronismus zu bilden” (MEW VI, 108).
In contrast to its French counterpart that had at least established a republic, the
German bourgeoisie largely supported the monarchy/aristocracy. Ironically, when
the bourgeoisie tried to assume the throne that the proletarian March Revolution
had aimed to overthrow, it sabotaged its own power basis and thus facilitated the

den Unterschichten an” (2002, 59). For tables listing the dead according to profession and social
group, see Obermann 1950, 289 and Siemann 1985, 69. Müller emphasises how the triumphs
of the March Revolution were purchased “mit dem Blut von Arbeitern und Handwerkern”
(2002, 59).
Although no such precise lists exist regarding the casualties of the Viennese March Revolution
and their social makeup, Wolfgang Häusler points out that “Handwerksgesellen und Arbeiter”
constituted the vast majority of those killed (1979, 149). His seminal study about the impor-
tance of the social question and the beginnings of the workers’ movement in the Viennese
Revolution proves how the increasingly politicised lower classes were the driving force not only
behind the initial revolution in March 1848, but also constituted the social group which most
determinedly resisted the counterrevolutionary forces throughout the revolution. For the role of
the proletariat, its socio-revolutionary demands and its clash with the bourgeoisie in Vienna, see
also Häusler 1986, Bruckmüller 2001, 267 and Reinalter 2002, 288.
The February Revolution in Paris (22 to 24 February 1848) differed considerably insofar as the
rebellious workers were joined by the bourgeois National Guard. However, this unity was very
short-lived and soon crumbled under the strongly emerging class tensions (see e.g Langewiesche
1986, 73-74, Lévêque 2001, 97-101 and Hachtmann 2001, 352-353), a view that Heinz-Ger-
hard Haupt and Friedrich Lenger contest (2001, 630-635). For a comparative view of the course
of the 1848 revolutions in the European capital cities, see Hachtmann 2001.
62 Wolfram Siemann’s seminal study of the German Revolution has particularly highlighted the
pivotal contribution of the lower classes to what has often been considered a solely bourgeois
revolution. Siemann distinguishes two subsequent revolutions which were opposed in their
goals: the sub-bourgeois “Basisrevolution” with “sozialrevolutionäre Töne” that paved the way
for the liberal bourgeois revolution (cf. 1985, 59). Manfred Gailus has conclusively proven how
the majority of the Berlin lower classes kept on fighting and protesting for their socioeconomic
goals throughout 1848 and 1849 (1990). For further studies of lower-class socio-revolutionary
protest and the role of the lower classes in the German Revolution, see for instance Bergmann
1986, Siemann 1986, Weber 2000, Haupt & Lenger 2001 and Gailus 2001.
 331

eventual return of the ancien régime.63 The so-called ‘Vereinbarungstheorie’ posits

that the German bourgeoisie must form an alliance with the old aristocracy, its
former adversaries to save the state. The strategy behind this theory completely
backfired. Aimed at combating the dangerous socio-revolutionary tendencies of
the proletariat, the strategy heightened the proletarian aversion towards the bour-
geoisie. Moreover, it enabled the aristocracy to fight the bourgeoisie in secret, while
officially pretending to be its ally. As a consequence what was intended to strength-
en the bourgeoisie’s political power-base weakened it considerably. According to
Marx, the Prussian bourgeoisie’s blatant misapprehensions paved the way for the
victory of the reactionary forces. In a similar way he later argues in Der achtzehnte
Brumaire that the French bourgeoise’s blunders brought Louis Bonaparte to power.
As he alleges in the following passage from the editorial of 16 December 1848
(No. 170), when the architects of the ‘Vereinbarungstheorie,’ the Prussian minister
president Ludolf Camphausen and his finance minister David Hansemann (“die
Öl und Wollhändler”)64 thought they were ascending to the vacant throne, they
were entirely unaware of their actual role in the revolutionary farce:

Die Öl und Wollhändler, welche das erste Ministerium nach der Märzrevo-
lution bildeten, gefielen sich in der Rolle, die bloßgestellte Krone mit ihren
plebejischen Fittichen zu decken. Sie schwelgten in dem Hochgenusse, hof-
fähig zu sein und widerstrebend, von ihrem rauhen Römertum aus reiner
Großmut ablassend – von dem Römertum des Vereinigten Landtags65 –, die
Kluft, welche den Thron zu verschlingen drohte, mit dem Leichnam ihrer
ehemaligen Popularität zu schließen. Wie spreizte sich der Minister Cam-
phausen als Wehmutter des konstitutionellen Thrones.66 Der brave Mann
63 Cf. Marx’s analysis of this development in the NRhZ’s editorial of 16 December 1848 (No. 170):
“Die Märzrevolution hat den Souverän von Gottes Gnaden keineswegs dem Volkssouveräne un-
terjocht. Sie hat nur die Krone, den absolutistischen Staat, gezwungen, sich mit der Bourgeoisie
zu verständigen, sich mit ihrem alten Rivalen zu vereinbaren” (MEW IV, 109; Marx’s emphasis).
64 The banker Ludolf Camphausen, Prussian minister president from March to June 1848, had
earlier in his career traded in oil. David Hansemann was besides Camphausen politically the
most powerful among the “liberale Repräsentanten der rheinischen Großbourgeoise” (Wehler
1989, 722). Hansemann, who was finance minister from March to September 1848, effectively
ran the government after Camphausen’s resignation under the weak president von Auerswald
until he was himself toppled. Marx here alludes to the fact that Hansemann, who came from an
impoverished pastor’s family, made his fortune as a wool trader in Aachen.
65 The ‘Vereinigte Landtag’ was, prior to the revolution, the only (unelected) representational or-
gan in Prussia.
66 In “Trotz Alledem!” (NRhZ No. 6/6 June 1848) Ferdinand Freiligrath describes the takeover
of the proletarian March Revolution by the liberal bourgeoisie in similar terms to Marx, as a
farce. Instead of the aristocracy, Germany is now ruled by “die Bourgeoisie am Thron” which
332
war offenbar über sich selbst, über seine eigne Großmut gerührt. Die Krone
und ihr Anhang duldete widerstrebend diese demütigende Protektorschaft,
sie machte bonne mine à mauvais jeu in Erwartung beßrer Tage. (MEW VI,
110; Marx’s emphasis)

Marx here in his article series “Die Bourgeoisie und die Kontrerevolution” an-
ticipates a key thesis from Der achtzehnte Brumaire. As he will do regarding the
French bourgeoisie in the latter work, Marx alleges that the Prussian bourgeoisie is
conjuring up the spirit of the Roman Republic to distract from the pathetic nature
of its revolutionary performance. Camphausen is not only an atrociously bad actor
when he publicly displays how touched he is about his own magnanimity in shar-
ing powers with the monarchic forces, but he is also ideologically confused when
he believes that forging such an alliance with the old powers against the proletariat
will secure the eventual victory of the German bourgeoisie. Marx voices this con-
viction as early as June 1848 in the editorial on the fall of Camphausen’s cabinet
(No. 23/22 June 1848) in the NRhZ, in which he predicts the failure of the bour-
geois German Revolution. Again he employs imagery of drama and theatre. The
entire liberal-bourgeois appearance was not much more than a costume, a cloak
with which Camphausen had disguised the counterrevolutionary powers. Now
these are strong enough again to rid themselves of the liberal mask they have had
to don. The fall of the Prussian bourgeoisie, however, is anything but tragic. Marx
forcefully exposes the pathetic nature of the entire German revolutionary farce
when he draws attention to the horrid acting skills that the German bourgeoisie
displays on the political stage:

Das Ministerium Camphausen hatte sein liberal-bürgerliches Gewand der

Kontrerevolution umgeworfen. Die Kontrerevolution fühlt sich stark ge-
nug, um die lästige Maske abzuschütteln. […] Das Ministerium Camphau-
sen sucht noch einige Pfennige Popularität zu erhaschen, das öffentliche
Mitleid rege zu machen durch die Versicherung, daß es als Dupe von der
Staatsbühne abtritt. Und sicher ist es ein betrogener Betrüger. Im Dienst
der großen Bourgeoisie mußte es die Revolution um ihre demokratischen
Früchte zu prellen suchen, im Kampf mit der Demokratie mußte es sich mit
der aristokratischen Partei verbünden und das Werkzeug ihrer kontrerevo-

does everything to imitate the aristocracy it has replaced (cf. Freiligrath 1973b, 21). To write
a comprehensive history of the socialist poetics of revolution in 1848 one would also need to
investigate this poem and Freiligrath’s other 1848 poems, in particular his seminal poem “Die
Todten an die Lebenden” (July 1848). Unlike Marx and Weerth’s text, the latter poem does not
employ any dramatic metaphors but instead recalls the Gothic mode to criticise the German
bourgeois revolutionaries and their politics.
 333
lutionären Gelüste werden. Sie ist genug erstarkt, um ihren Protektor über
Bord werfen zu können. Herr Camphausen hat die Reaktion gesät im Sinne
der großen Bourgeoisie, er hat sie geerntet im Sinne der Feudalpartei. Das war
die gute Absicht des Mannes, das sein böses Geschick. Einen Pfennig Popu-
larität für den enttäuschten Mann. (MEW V, 97; Marx’s emphasis)

Like a ham actor, Camphausen exits the political stage but still publicly vies for
popularity and sympathy. The bourgeoisie pictures itself as the tragic actor in a
great world-historic tragedy. Camphausen claims that fate, “sein böses Geschick,”
is the cause of his tragic fall and tries to secure his place within – what he por-
trays as – the German revolutionary tragedy. By turning Camphausen’s pathos into
bathos, Marx mercilessly ridicules his world-historic pretension. As he suggests,
Camphausen’s performance merely has earned him the role of a lead character in
the German revolutionary farce. Echoing this judgment in his lead article from 10
December 1848 (cf. MEW VI, 104), Marx further points to the bourgeois delu-
sion that a tough stance against the revolutionary masses would secure victory for
this class. However, instead of helping to win the revolution for the bourgeoisie,
the military action of the Prussian bourgeoisie against the proletariat (these “ein-
zigen Heldentaten der preußischen Bourgeoisie nach dem März, die oft blutigen
Schikanen der Bürgerwehr gegen das unbewaffnete Proletariat”) only played into
the hands of the reconstituting forces of reaction: “der Armee,” “der Bürokratie,”
and even “der Feudalherrn” (cf. 110). After cheating the proletariat out of its revo-
lutionary victory against the old forces, the entire class finally ends as “die düpierte
Bourgeoisie” (MEW VI, 123) when the aristocracy takes back its power. Cam-
phausen as the “düpierte Schwindler” (MEW V, 97) had already anticipated this
outcome in June 1848 when resigning as Prussian State Minister. The bourgeoisie’s
dramatic performance does not extend beyond second-rate stage tricks, worthy
only of “schauspielernden Eskamoteurs” (cf. MEW VI, 112). Trying to trick the
masses, they end up duping themselves. Instead of playing the part in the tragedy
of world history as they thought, the liberal bourgeois politicians only acted as
minor characters. They acted as proxies of a class with a self-inflated ego in the
farce of German political revolution, as Marx highlights in his lead article on 10
December 1848 in the NRhZ (No. 165). As he insists, their sole ‘achievement’ had
been to have been pushed to the front of the revolutionary stage:

Man täusche sich indes nicht; man schreibe einem Camphausen, einem
Hansemann, diesen Männern untergeordnetster Größe, keine weltge-
schichtliche Initiative zu. Sie waren nichts als die Organe einer Klasse. Ihre
Sprache, ihre Handlungen waren nur das offizielle Echo einer Klasse, die sie
334
in den Vordergrund gedrängt hatte. Sie waren nur die große Bourgeoisie –
im Vordergrunde. (MEW VI, 104)

Weerth strongly shared Marx’s crushing verdict on the most prominent exponents
of bourgeois revolution. Like Marx, he too exposes them as bathetic actors in the
pathetic play of the German revolutionary farce. One might even argue that in
several of his 1848 satires, which were published in the NRhZ some months before
Marx’s ruthless reckoning with the role of the liberal bourgeoisie in revolutionary
politics, Weerth anticipates Marx’s poetics of the German Revolution. In the same
vein as Marx, Weerth unmasks the world-historic pretensions of that class. Most
tangible are the similarities to Marx in Weerth’s mock epic poem “Kein schöner
Ding ist auf der Welt, als seine Feinde zu beißen” (No. 114-116/12-14 October
1848) and in the last published chapter (No. 36/6 July 1848) of his Humoristische
Szenen aus dem deutschen Handelsleben (1845-1848), which is tellingly entitled:
“Das Dasein des Herrn Preiss gewinnt eine welthistorische Bedeutung.” In the
poem the narrator, who – as Weerth’s alter ego – is a journalist with the NRhZ, has
to flee Cologne after the imposition of martial law and the temporary suppression
of the paper at the end of September 1848.67 Yet even in his hideout the police
hunt him down. Trying to trick the rather dimwitted policemen, the narrator stag-
es an elaborate role-play that parodies several well-known figures from the German
bourgeois revolution. Among them are the former wool and oil traders turned
politicians Camphausen and Hansemann whom Weerth merges into one charac-
ter. Like Marx later, he exposes them as pathetic actors in the farce of the German
Revolution, who are massively deluded about their world historic mission:68

Da hob ich mich würdig empor und sprach:

“Ich heiße Charlemagne!
Wollhändler bin ich in Aachen und trink
Recht gerne den Wein der Champagne.

Ich spekuliere in Trüffeln und Öl,

Mein Bankier empfängt mich prächtig.”

67 As I have argued elsewhere, Weerth’s and Marx’s satires of these rather farcical events in Cologne,
and especially of the bourgeoisie’s exaggerated reaction to the disturbances, form crucial texts for
their poetics of revolution (see Hörmann 2007a, 127-132).
68 As far as I can tell, this allusion to Camphausen/Hansemann has not yet been pointed out, not
even by Bernd Füllner, who has published a very well annotated edition of the poem in the ver-
sion as it appeared in the NRhZ (see 1987).
 335
Da sprach der erste Gendarme: “Mein Herr,
Dies ist ausnehmend verdächtig!” (Weerth 1956 I, 281)

Exaggerating the monarchic and world-historic aspirations of his bourgeois capi-

talist enemies, Weerth’s narrator claims to be “Charlemagne,” one the most pow-
erful European monarchs of all time. Like Marx, who parodies the monarchic
pretensions of the “Öl und Wollhändler” Camphausen und Hansemann in the
NRhZ two months later (cf. MEW VI, 110), Weerth also ridicules their inflated
egos. In their respective genres – satirical political poem and satirical political ar-
ticle – Weerth and Marx mock the bourgeoisie with the same scornful allegations.
Both resort to biting satire to expose and ridicule the ambitions of the Prussian
bourgeois leaders to become figures of world-historic statue and succeed the mon-
arch as rulers of Germany. Weerth emphasises his satirical strategy in the first line
of his poem that could very well figure as a motto to many of the texts that Weerth
and Marx wrote on the 1848/49 Revolutions: “Kein schöner Ding ist auf der Welt,
/ Als seine Feinde zu beißen, / Als über all die plumpen Gesellen / Seine lustigen
Witze zu reißen” (Weerth 1956 I, 269). 69
Weerth sees himself firmly in the tradition of other contemporary political
satirists such as Heine. Referring intertextually to the beginning of Caput III of
Heine’s Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen, Weerth establishes an intertextual dia-
logue with the epic poem of his great idol. Heine’s narrator warns the reader to
confuse the minor Swabian poet Karl Mayer from Stuttgart neither with Charle-
magne nor with Heine the great poet. The ‘minor’ poet Weerth mockingly reminds
his readers that – in spite of their world-historic ambitions – the two Prussian
politicians Camphausen and Hansemann, the wool trader from Aachen, must not
be confused with such great figures from history such as the Emperor:70

Zu Aachen, im alten Dome, liegt

Carolus Magnus begraben
(Man muß ihn nicht verwechseln mit Karl
Mayer, der lebt in Schwaben.)

69 The social historian Wolfgang Häusler, who quotes these opening lines from Weerth’s poem in
an essay on political satire, is – as far as I can see – the only critic who points out the affinity of
this poem with Marx’s sarcastically satiric poetics of revolution as they emerge most prominently
in Der achtzehnte Brumaire (see 1987, 85-86). Häusler maintains that the opening stanza of this
poem “des mit Marx befreundeten ersten sozialistischen Satirikers Weerth [...] auch als Motto
zu Marxens publizistischen Werk stehen [könnten]” (1987, 86).
70 This example seems to me a perfect illustration for Franz Mehring’s claim that Weerth often
made use of Heine’s forms and poetry, “um sie mit einem ganz originellen, selbständigen Inhalt
zu erfüllen” (1960 ff. X, 621).
336
Ich möchte nicht tot und begraben sein
Als Kaiser zu Aachen im Dome
Weit lieber lebt ich als kleinster Poet
Zu Stukkert am Neckarstrome. (ll. 1-8; Heine 1997 IV, 581)

The main intertextual and inter-ideological interplay, however, takes place between
Weerth and Marx. Weerth anticipates another one of Marx’s criticisms of the lib-
eral bourgeoisie in that the German bourgeoisie, misjudging the socio-political
situation, regarded the proletarian victory in the March Revolution solely as a wel-
come opportunity to increase their capital, both in political as well as in material
terms. This stinging allegation is contained in the stanza of “Kein schöner Ding”
that immediately follows the passage quoted above. In it the narrator in the guise
of the liberal businessman turned politician, boasts how the revolution provided
him with a great opportunity to speculate in stocks:

Ich aber fuhr fort: “Auch Spiritus

Verkauf ich von hoher Reinheit,
Nahm Aktien auf jede Luftschiffahrt
Sowie auf die deutsche Einheit. (Weerth 1956 I, 281)

The irony here consists in the suggestion that the belief in the success of the politi-
cal revolution constitutes as idle a dream as the faith in the immediate commercial
success of aeronautics. Weerth implies that the entire bourgeois political revolution
can be seen as an ill-advised capitalist speculation that has gone massively wrong.
Marx echoes this view in his editorial in the NRhZ from 16 December 1848 (No.
170):

Es war klar. Die preußische Bourgeoisie hatte nur noch eine Aufgabe,
die Aufgabe, sich ihre Herrschaft bequem zu machen, die störenden An-
archisten zu beseitigen, “Ruhe und Ordnung” wiederherzustellen und die
Zinsen wieder einzubringen, die während des Märzsturms verlorengegan-
gen waren. Es konnte sich nur noch darum handeln, die Produktionskosten
ihrer Herrschaft und der sie bedingenden Märzrevolution auf ein Minimum
zu beschränken. (MEW VI, 110-111; Marx’s emphasis)

Metaphorically shifting the ground from politics to business, Marx alleges that,
from the angle of the liberal capitalist politicians of the so-called ‘Märzministe-
rien,’ the March Revolution, the “Märzsturm,” with its tempestuous events and its
display of the power of the masses, presented itself mainly as a dangerous commer-
cial crisis. Their main goal was to revive the stock markets after the fall they suf-
 337

fered during the March Revolution and in running the government maximise their
profits by minimising the “Produktionskosten.” However, applying their capitalist
business doctrines to revolutionary politics ended in disaster for the bourgeoisie as
it ignored the role of the two other classes in the revolution, the proletariat and the
aristocracy. On the one hand, it suppressed the fact that the proletariat barricade
fighters of the March Revolution – at least semiconsciously – also rebelled against
the capitalist system. On the other, in the obsession with profit-making, they also
ignored how the old aristocracy used every opportunity to secure its comeback.
Weerth also satirises very pointedly this mistaken attitude of the bourgeoisie
that regards the March Revolution as a commercial crisis that has to be trans-
formed into a business opportunity. Weerth accomplishes this in the figure of Herr
Preiss, the protagonist of his Humoristischen Szenen aus dem deutschen Handelsle-
ben. Drawing connections to Marx and Engels, the historian Wolfgang Büttner
has already very compellingly shown how, in those chapters of the Szenen that
appeared in the NRhZ in June and July 1848, the figure of the businessman Preiss
forms a satire on the Prussian-Rhenish “Großkaufmann schlechthin” (1993, 130)
and on Hansemann and Camphausen in particular (130-135).71 It remains for me
here to investigate how Weerth links this satirical depiction of the liberal bourgeoi-
sie to the Marxist poetics of revolution.
In the figure of Herr Preiss the businessman, Weerth exposes the utter absurdity
of the farce that the German bourgeoisie is performing in the aftermath of the Eu-
ropean revolutions. In the satirical dissection of Preiss’ actions, Weerth again antic-
ipates Marx’s equally satirical reckoning with the pathetic behaviour of the liberal
bourgeoisie. In chapter X of Humoristische Skizzen, called “Herr Preiss in Nöten”
(NRhZ No. 1-4/1-4 June 1848), the outbreak of the European Revolutions rocks
the titular hero’s business opportunities. With extreme bathos, Preiss describes the
revolution as a tragedy, as a fateful natural disaster, that has devastated business:

“Trotzend der Konkurrenz, überwanden wir vieles. Leuchtend lag die Zu-
kunft vor uns – da schlägt die verfluchte Revolution hinein!” “Und unsre
Bons auf die Insel Sandwich fallen auf Null”, unterbrach der Buchhalter mit
Schwermut. “Ja, da schlägt die Revolution, wie der Hagel in ein Kartoffel-
feld, wie der Blitz in den Spinat. Verschwunden ist unser Hoffen, und unser
Glück ist aus. […] Falliten folgen Falliten, und der Kredit ist erschüttert bis
in seine Urtiefen. Throne wackeln, und es wackelt der letzte Seifensieder.

71 One might argue that the function “Preiss” is already alluded to through his name, which seems
to be constructed from ‘Preis,’ expressing the mercantile obsession in all his actions, and ‘Preiß,’
the Bavarian word for a Prussian that often carries extremely derogative connotations.
338
Bankiers fallen wie die Fliegen im Winter. […] Auf der Straße geht man ein-
her wie ein Leichenbitter, verhöhnt von rohen Proletariern, gierig angegafft
vom nimmersatten Volk. Auf der Börse ist es still wie mitten in einem Korn-
felde. Man hört die Mäuse an den Wänden krabbeln, und Tränen rinnen
um die angeschlagenen niedrigen Kurse […]” (Weerth 1956 II, 451-452)

The proletarians that mock the businessman and the envious looks of the hungry
masses betray the social dimension to the revolutionary crisis. However, in Preiss’
eyes, there remains only an economic answer to the political and social crisis of
the revolution which he reduces to an economic crisis. Preiss announces that “die
Produktionskosten und die Betriebsspesen müssen bis auf ein Minimum reduziert
werden” (Weerth 1956 II, 454). This declaration seems to provide the obvious
source for Marx’s later assertion that the actions of the liberal bourgeoisie aimed
“die Produktionskosten ihrer Herrschaft und der sie bedingenden Märzrevolution
auf ein Minimum zu beschränken” (MEW VI, 111; Marx’s emphasis). From the
bourgeois perspective, the revolutions must be reduced to the status of mere busi-
ness crises to suppress the fact that these dramatic events enacted on the “Bühne
der Welt” (Weerth 1956 II, 455) challenge not only overtly the political but also
implicitly the socioeconomic status quo. The proletarian basis revolution (Siemann
1985) in Berlin harbours the potential of open class struggle and thus the possibil-
ity of revolutionary tragedy. This is suggested by the mock-tragic depiction of the
impact the news of the March Revolution has on Preiss and his accountant. When
they read of it in the newspaper, they ‘die’ a stage death. Although the way that
they seem to ‘expire’ is bathetic, and more reminiscent of melodrama or farce than
tragedy, the events that cause it are far from ridiculous. The red dawn that follows
the ‘death scene’ might tell of the blood that has been shed in Berlin as well as of
a coming ‘red republic’:

Armer Preiss! Du wußtest nicht, was du tatest. Seht ihn sitzen, den gewal-
tigen Mann. Er schaut in das verhängnisvolle Blatt, er liest nur einen Au-
genblick – da ergreift ein Zittern all seine Glieder, seine Knie schlottern,
seine Mütze fällt vom Haupte. “Revolution in Berlin!” ruft er mit erstick-
ter Stimme, und wie der Buchhalter Lenz gegen Westen gefallen, so sinkt
der würdige Prinzipal gen Osten in die Arme des Lehnstuhls. “Hallo! Jetzt
ist der Teufel erst recht los –”, das sind die letzten Worte, die er zu spre-
chen vermag, die Zunge versagt ihm den Dienst, seine Augenlider sinken,
und wiederum herrscht auf dem weiten Comptoir Todesstille. Rötlich aber
strahlt der Morgen durch die zwei großen, halbverstaubten Fenster auf die
Tintenkleckse des Schreibpults. (Weerth 1956 II, 455-456)
 339

Preiss, the “Prinzipal” (meaning both businessman and the lead director) and his
accountant survive their stage deaths. His reaction after his recovery from the
news of “jener welterschütternden Nachricht der Berliner Revolution” (455) is
telling regarding this bourgeois delusion about the socio-political importance of
the March Revolution. He is most concerned about the impact it will have on
his business and does not realise the potential threat that it poses to society. This
essential bourgeois fear is subconsciously present, but remains largely unacknowl-
edged, buried under the pathetic fears for the wellbeing of his business. During
the night that follows the day when he hears the news of the March Revolution his
anxiety rises proportionally to his falling stocks: “seine Angst stieg um 20 Prozent”
(455).72 However, a disturbing nightmare which culminates in a scene in which
the socio-revolutionary war between the numbers, the proletariat, and the zeros,
the bourgeoisie and aristocracy breaks out, raises the spectre of the doomsday of
contemporary society. Yet, even this very explicitly symbolic dream is misinter-
preted by Preiss as being about the crisis of business rather than an essential crisis
of bourgeois society. Preiss is as deluded about the true importance of this spectre
of proletarian social revolution as is the entire Prussian bourgeoisie from Marx’s
perspective. As the narrator ironically comments:

Aber Herr Preiss erkannte gar nicht die welthistorische Bedeutung seines
Traumes. In der Empörung der Zahlen gegen die Nullen seines Kapitalkon-
tos sah er einzig und allein eine Gefährdung seiner kommerziellen Interes-
sen. (Weerth 1956 II, 464)

Yet Preiss would not have been a proper incarnation of the Prussian bourgeoisie if
he did not try to arrange his mercantile interests with the liberal-political ideology
that largely dominated the politics of the German revolution. In chapter XII “Wie
sich der Herr Preiss nach den Zeitverhältnissen richtet” (NRhZ No. 18/18 June
1848), he tries to come up with business plans to use the changed socio-political
situation after the March Revolution for his advantage. The seemingly ingenious
idea that he eventually devises is to produce shrapnel shells, since – as Wolfgang
Büttner points out – unlike other weapons that can be turned against the authori-
72 How seriously Preiss is shaken by the dramatic drop in the values of his stocks in the wake
of the European revolutions becomes evident also in the following mock-heroic passage from
chapter XI “Der Buchhalter Lenz als Bürgergardist” (NRhZ No. 16/16 June 1848): “Die Febru-
arereignisse berührten ihn wie eine Ohrfeige; die Märzrevolution traf ihn wie der Donner Zeus’,
des unsterblichen. ‘Von heute an will ich alle Betteljungen in österreichischen Metalliques-Cou-
pons bezahlen!’ rief der schmerzlich bewegte Mann aus, ‘da bin ich sicher, daß ich nicht zuviel
gebe. Meine Bons auf die Insel Sandwich sind nur zu Fidibus [Feuerholz] gut; meine Eisenbahn-
und Bergwerksaktien – hol sie der Teufel. Sela!’” (1956 II, 466)
340

ties they can only be used by the military against the people. As such they formed
an essential weapon in the liberal government’s campaign to suppress any socio-
revolutionary tendencies of the proletariat (see Büttner 1993, 134-135), a fact
that Preiss (in chapter XIV “Das Dasein das Herrn Preiss gewinnt welthistorische
Bedeutung”) very cynically reflects. For him it was obvious that the “Schrapnell-
fabrikation” had to appeal to the Prussian government and prove an economic
success, especially since “wir die mörderischen Dinger ‘Pillen gegen das souveräne
Volk’ nennen” (1956 II, 483).
However, the strategy of the liberal government of repressing the people and
their freedom failed, because it only helped to re-empower the old aristocratic
forces and the staple of its power, the military and the police. As Marx writes
in December 1848 that “[u]nter dem Minister der Tat Hansemann-Pinto73 wurde
die alte Polizei neu eingekleidet und ein ebenso erbitterter, als kleinlicher Krieg
der Bourgeoisie gegen das Volk geführt” (MEW VI, 103-104). This made it all
the easier for the old forces to employ the modernised police apparatus to regain
power once the liberal bourgeois governments had been replaced by conservative
counterrevolutionary ones by the end of September 1848. Only a slight change in
the costumes and props was necessary to restore the pre-revolutionary order: “Es
gehörte dazu nur noch ein – Schnurrbart und ein Säbel statt eines Kopfes” (104).
Paradoxically, the bourgeoisie, in its revolutionary farce was using the same old ac-
tors as the old aristocratic forces (“die alte Polizei”). They were only dressed up in
new costumes to combat the various forms of political freedom that brought the
bourgeoisie to power. While it believed – in the same way as the Prussian govern-
ment in den Szenen – that in combatting the rebellious lower classes with shrapnel
shells, the “‘Pillen gegen das souveräne Volk,’” it was consolidating its power basis,
the liberal bourgeoisie was ironically destroying its very “Waffen […] in ihrem
Kampfe gegen die feudale Gesellschaft”:

Die Waffen, welche die preußische Bourgeoisie in ihrem Kampfe gegen die
feudale Gesellschaft und deren Krone unter der Firma des Volks in An-
spruch zu nehmen sich gezwungen sah, Assoziationsrecht, Preßfreiheit etc.,
mußten sie nicht zerbrochen werden in den Händen eines betörten Volks,
das sie nicht mehr für die Bourgeoisie zu führen brauchte und gegen sie
zu führen bedenkliche Gelüste kundgab? Der Vereinbarung der Bourgeoisie
mit der Krone, davon war sie überzeugt, dem Markten der Bourgeoisie mit
dem alten, in sein Schicksal ergebenen Staate, stand offenbar nur noch ein
Hindernis im Wege, ein einziges Hindernis, das Volk – puer robustus sed
73 Isaac Pinto was an 18th-century Dutch merchant, stock speculator, and economist (See
MEW VI, 719).
 341
malitiosus, wie Hobbes sagt. Das Volk und die Revolution! (MEW VI, 111;
Marx’s emphasis)

Limiting the liberal achievements of the right to assemble freely and to have free-
dom of press, etc. to preempt the danger of socio-revolutionary unrest was a farci-
cal action since it did not save the bourgeois government but only helped to bring
the old forces back into power, Marx maintains. In his article in the NRhZ from
16 December 1848, Marx employs the same metaphor of politics as a business deal
(“Firma des Volks,” “dem Markten der Bourgeoisie”) as Weerth does in the Szenen
about half a year earlier.
Herr Preiss also falls prey to similar delusions as the Prussian bourgeoisie did in
Marx’s eyes. Initially his business idea of producing shrapnel shells to repress the
socio-revolutionary leanings of the people even earns him an invitation in Berlin
“zur Bildung eines neuen Ministeriums.” However, his belief that he will be play-
ing a world-historic role in the German revolutionary drama is as mistaken as is
the self-assessment of the entire bourgeoisie about their historic role in the political
revolutions of 1848. Like the Camphausens and Heinemanns, he is only about to
be cast as an actor in Germany’s revolutionary farce:

“Ist es ein Wunder, daß man auch mich aus dem Dunkel des Geschäftsle-
bens herausreißt, um meinen Fähigkeiten den Platz anzuweisen, der ihnen
im Buche des Schicksals bestimmt war?”
“Sie sind ein großer Mann!” murmelte der Buchhalter. “Schon durch ihre
Ölspekulationen haben Sie sich weit und breit bekannt gemacht.” (Weerth
1956 II, 485; emphasis in original)

Evidently marked out as a satire on Camphausen through the allusion to his for-
mer oil business (see also Büttner 1993, 133), Preiss’ ascent to the heights of world
history is abruptly brought to a halt by the following incident, with which Die
humoristischen Szenen aus dem deutschen Handelsleben in the NRhZ end. The pro-
letariat – “das Volk – puer robustus sed malitiosus, wie Hobbes sagt” (MEW VI,
11), a robust but malicious youth – forms the obstacle that stops Preiss’ ministerial
career in its tracks:

Auf das ganz unbegründete Gerücht hin, daß der Herr Preiss Ministerprä-
sident werde, warfen ihm rohe Proletarier aber noch selbigen Abends die
Fenster ein. (Weerth 1956 II, 485)
342

In this final paragraph of Weerth’s satire, the farce of bourgeois political revolution
is interrupted by the spectre of the proletarian social revolution. While Büttner
highlights that the smashing of windows by workers alludes to a real incident dur-
ing Camphausen’s visit to Cologne (1993, 133), the importance of this final sce-
nario of Weerth’s satire extends far beyond this – in world-historical terms – rather
marginal instance of proletarian resistance. It echoes the last lines of Weerth’s poem
“Der alte Wirth in Lancahire” (1845): “Und selbe Nacht auf weichem Flaume /
Ein Reicher lag in bösem Traume –” (1971, 64-65). As I have argued earlier, these
final lines of the poem prophesy the eventual triumph of the future proletarian
social revolutionary, a meaning that similar lines that conclude Die humoristischen
Szenen also take on. Importantly, there is a further crucial reference implicit in this
paragraph: the allusion to the tragedy of the failed June Insurrection (23-26 June
1848), which was still current news when the chapter was published in the NRhZ
on 6 July 1848. In this attempt at social revolution, the ‘rough proletarians’ both
surprised and terrified the European bourgeoisie.

4.2.4 Towards a New Poetics of Social Revolution: 1848/49 as Tragedy and

Anti-Tragedy

The June Insurrection constituted the largest and most important socio-revolu-
tionary revolt in the European revolutions of 1848/49. For many contemporary
observers it marked the first large-scale attempt at proletarian revolution. It was
triggered when on 21 June 1848 the provisional government of the French Re-
public closed the national workshops that had been established in the wake of the
February Revolution to provide work for the large number of unemployed work-
ers. The announcement of their closure resulted in four days of fierce street fight-
ing in which the army, under the command of the republican General Cavaignac
in conjunction with the bourgeois Guard National, finally defeated the rebellious
workers. With several thousand Parisian workers killed and even more persecuted,
executed, and deported in the ensuing anti-proletarian backlash, for the contem-
porary socialists the June Insurrection was a drama of infinitely greater world-
historic proportions than any other of the many battles during the Revolutions of
1848/49.74 As Marx will write retrospectively after the fall of revolutionary Vienna

74 There is a disagreement among scholars about the number of casualties and victims of the June
Insurrection. As Roger V. Gould highlights, the figures given by scholars are largely a matter
of speculation, as there exists no precise data. He himself estimates the force of the rebellious
 343

to counterrevolutionary troops (NRhZ No. 136/7 November 1848), the June In-
surrection marked the decisive “ersten Akt […] des Dramas” of class war (entitled
“Die Junitage”), in which “das arbeitende und denkende Proletariat” played the
major role (MEW V, 457).

Image V Titlepage of Neue Rheinische Zeitung (No. 29/29 June 1848) with Karl Marx’s
editorial on the June Insurrection
workers as “measuring somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000”, who fought “37,000 regular
troops and 15,000 members of the Mobile Guard in a fierce street battle.” According to him,
the “authorities arrested 5,000 people during the fighting, to which were added another 6,000
suspected insurgents in the aftermath.” Modern scholars estimate that casualties among the
workers amounted to up to 2,000 dead and at least 1,000 wounded, although – as Gould con-
cedes – “precise figures for such events are chimerical” (1995, 49).
344

Marx perceives this tragic dimension already in the famous editorial about the
June Insurrection in the NRhZ (No. 29/29 June 1848) (Image V). In contrast to
all previous revolutionary tragedies, he suggests, its sole hero was the proletariat,
desperately fighting for its social rights, under its own leadership. With strong
Communist revolutionary pathos, which aims to do justice to the seriousness of
the event – “dem Ernst der Ereignisse” (MEW V, 133) – Marx comments on the
fiercely determined resistance of the Parisian proletariat as follows:

Ohne andre Führer, ohne andre Mittel als die Empörung selbst, widerstand
es der vereinigten Bourgeoisie und Soldateska länger, als je eine französische
Dynastie, mit allem militärischen Apparat versehn, einer mit dem Volk ver-
einigten Fraktion der Bourgeoisie widerstand. Damit die letzte Illusion des
Volks verschwinde, damit gänzlich mit der Vergangenheit gebrochen werde,
mußte auch die gewohnte poetische Zutat der französischen Emeute, die
enthusiastische Bourgeoisjugend, die Zöglinge der école polytechnique, die
dreikrampigen Hüte auf der Seite der Unterdrücker stehn. Die Zöglinge der
medizinischen Fakultät mußten den verwundeten Plebejern die Hülfe der
Wissenschaft versagen. Die Wissenschaft existiert nicht für den Plebejer, der
das unsagbare, das unsägliche Verbrechen beging, sich einmal für seine eigne
Existenz in die Schanze zu schlagen, statt für Louis-Philippe oder für Herrn
Marrast.(MEW V, 133)

According to Marx’s verdict, the June Insurrection formed the first large-scale at-
tempt of a proletarian social revolution. In contrast to all previous revolutions (the
French Revolution, the July Revolution of 1830, and the February Revolution in
1848), the proletariat did not fight to achieve a victory for the bourgeoisie and
their class interests, but for the first time the proletariat rose up in an attempt
“seine allereigensten Interessen selbständig zu vertreten” (MEW V, 136; Marx’s em-
phasis). The remorseless street battles destroyed any lingering illusions that within
the existing socioeconomic order one could forge an alliance between the revolu-
tionary proletariat and radical republican factions, substituting this vision for a
scenario of class war and attempted proletarian social revolution. As such, it also
formed the first conscious and up to then most serious challenge to the bourgeois
order and its socioeconomic system of capitalism:75

75 Many contemporary bourgeois observer, even those of completely different political persua-
sions, concur with Marx’s verdict on the June Insurrection that it constituted the first conscious
class war in history. As the liberal-conservative political writer Alexis de Tocqueville emphasises
in his memoirs (written after 1849), it was the first genuine class struggle ever, the first conscious
attempt at proletarian social revolution: “Another point that distinguished [the June Insurrec-
tion] from all other events of the same type during the last sixty years was that its object was not
 345
Keine der zahllosen Revolutionen der französischen Bourgeoisie seit 1789
war ein Attentat auf die Ordnung, denn sie ließ die Herrschaft der Klasse,
sie ließ die Sklaverei der Arbeiter, sie ließ die bürgerliche Ordnung bestehen,
sooft auch die politische Form dieser Herrschaft und dieser Sklaverei wech-
selte. Der Juni hat diese Ordnung angetastet. Wehe über den Juni! (MEW V,
135; Marx’s emphasis)

The repercussions of the June Insurrection stretched far beyond France. From a
bourgeois perspective it raised the fear of the spectre of proletarian social revolu-
tion all across Europe. In the Marxist poetics of revolution it forms the climax of
the revolutionary drama of 1848/49 while its failure constitutes the major tragedy
of these years. In spite of the enormous setback that this defeat marked for any
hopes of a successful proletarian revolution, from a Marxist point of view this
catastrophe of the revolutionary tragedy at the same time produced a major revela-
tion for its spectators. The insight that the class war between the proletariat and
the bourgeoisie (and hence also further attempts at proletarian social revolution)
was inevitable in modern bourgeois society exposed the ideological delusions of
a concept of political revolution: that these two antagonistic classes could peace-
fully coexist in a republican system that would guarantee absolute political but not
social equality. Marx stresses that his tragic hero, the Parisian proletariat, achieved
exactly such a decisive ideological victory despite its military defeat. Although out-
numbered and routed by the troops of the bourgeois republic, the Parisian workers
fundamentally exposed the ideological delusions on which the myth of the solely
political, republican revolution was built. In the manner of the hero or heroine in
a tragedy of Weimar Classicism (maybe most paradigmatically Maria in Schiller’s
Maria Stuart), the Parisian proletarians as tragic heroes with their failure, at the
same time, achieved a moral and ideological victory:

Die Pariser Arbeiter sind erdrückt worden von der Übermacht, sie sind ihr
nicht erlegen. Sie sind geschlagen, aber ihre Gegner sind besiegt. Der augen-
blickliche Triumph der brutalen Gewalt ist erkauft mit der Vernichtung
aller der Täuschungen und Einbildungen der Februarrevolution, mit der
Auflösung der ganzen alt-republikanischen Partei, mit der Zerklüftung der
französischen Nation in zwei Nationen, die Nation der Besitzer und die
Nation der Arbeiter. Die trikolore Republik trägt nur mehr eine Farbe, die
Farbe der Geschlagenen, die Farbe des Bluts. Sie ist zur roten Republik gewor-
den. (MEW V, 133; Marx’s emphasis)
to change the form of the government, but to alter the organization of society. In truth it was
not a political struggle (in the sense in which we have used the word ‘political’ up to now), but
a class struggle, a sort of ‘Servile War.’” (Tocqueville 1987, 136).
346

Employing a syntactically parallel construction and using verbs that are near syno-
nyms, Marx creates a pronounced contrast between the momentary catastrophic
failure of proletarian social revolution and the longer-term ideological victory
over the concept of bourgeois political revolution, its antithesis. Though defeated,
“erdrückt” by the numerical strength of the hostile troops, the proletariat was not
“erlegen,” and had not succumbed to its antagonist. Marx insists in a seemingly
paradoxical statement: although the proletariat has been beaten, “geschlagen,” its
enemies are defeated, “besiegt.” Even in its utter downfall the proletariat, as the
tragic hero, has revealed and dismantled the entire ideological superstructure of the
concept of the bourgeois political revolution. The momentary triumph of bour-
geoisie comes at the cost of the destruction “aller Täuschungen und Einbildungen
der Februarrevolution.” The idea that a democratic republic could form the pana-
cea to society’s ills, which is the premise of the concept of the merely political revo-
lution, was utterly discredited. Its symbol, the tricolour of the French republic, was
dyed red with the blood of the slain workers. Genuine “Fraternité,” the slogan of
both the French Revolution and the February Revolution of 1848, can never exist
in a bourgeois republican system since this will always only be the fake “Brüderli-
chkeit der entgegengesetzten Klassen, von denen die andere exploitiert” (MEW V,
133). This can only be achieved, Marx implies, in a socialist republic. Its eventual
victory is already symbolically anticipated in the image of the republican flag, the
tricolour being transformed into the socialist red flag due to blood spilt by Parisian
workers. After the June Insurrection the bourgeois republican notion of broth-
erhood between the opposing social classes revealed itself as utter “Anachronis-
mus” (136), whereas the socialist notion of transcending the class system through
fighting out the class struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie has emerged
as the revolutionary concept of the future. While before the June Insurrection
the hollow phrase of fraternity was still widely employed by “Pendanten der alten
revolutionären Überlieferung von 1793, […] Republikaner, welche die ganze alte
bürgerliche Ordnung mit Abzug des gekrönten Kopfes verlangten” (134), it is now
only conjured up by the worst actors in the bourgeois revolutionary farce, “jene
elende Utopisten und Heuchler,” who are now even catcalled at by the majority
of the bourgeois National Assembly (cf. 136). For Marx, this obvious bankruptcy
of the notion of fraternity in a republican system revealed that genuine fraternity
is only possible in the “roten Republik,” a socialist republic. This in turn can only
be achieved through a proletarian social revolution which will not only change the
socioeconomic system, but also has to supersede class divisions altogether, even at
the cost of further tragic bloodshed. “Die Kollisionen, welche aus den Bedingun-
gen der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft selbst hervorgehen, sie müssen durchkämpft,
 347

sie können nicht wegphantasiert werden,” Marx insists (MEW V, 136), thus con-
firming Raymond Williams’ claim that for Marx “tragedy occurs at those points
where the conflicting forces must, by their inner nature, take action, and carry the
conflict through to a transformation” (1966, 135).76 This is the anagnorisis that
Marx tries to generate by his paradoxical portrayal of the June Insurrection as a
simultaneously tragic and non-tragic event. Although a momentary catastrophe
for the proletariat as the hero of revolutionary drama, Marx tries to reveal how, at
the same time, it marks the starting point of a dialectic reversal of the tragic plot,
its peripeteia. This puts Marx’s poetics in sharp contrast to the one of Greek tragedy
where the reversal of action leads to ultimate catastrophe. However, until the anti-
tragic resolution occurs, many more tragic revolutionary defeats of the proletariat
may be necessary, Marx suggests.77
Marx tries to produce these insights in his readers not merely through the logic
of his argument but also by evoking the dialectic cathartic emotions of eleos and
phobos, “Jammer und Schauder” (cf. Aristotle 1994, 36), in the face of the tragic
catastrophe. In Greek tragedy dramatic devices used to induce these emotions in-
clude “schwere[s] Leid,” “schmerzliches Geschehen,” “Todesfälle auf offener Büh-
ne, heftige Schmerzen, Verwundungen und dergleichen mehr” (Aristotle 1994,
76 For a discussion in how far the June Insurrection could be considered a ‘social tragedy,’ see Hör-
mann 2009.
77 Here I fundamentally disagree with Hayden White who plays down the importance of tragedy
for Marx’s poetics of revolution. He maintains that the “defeat of the June insurgents was thus
characterized as a lamentable, but hardly Tragic, event, inasmuch as their resistance to the bour-
geoisie was not informed by a clear notion of their aims or by any realistic assessment of their
prospects for victory” (1973, 323). The reason that he gives for considering the failure of the
June Insurrection as non-tragic are White’s own assertions and not backed up by any statements
of Marx, neither in his editorial on the June Insurrection nor in the passages in Der achtzehnte
Brumaire in which he also engages with this event. On the contrary, in both texts Marx casts
the Paris proletarians as tragic heroes when he emphasises the doomed heroism of their defiant
resistance. White’s misreadings are informed by a more general misapprehension of the role of
tragedy and comedy in Marx’s poetics of history. Simplistically, White aligns the two genres in
Marx’s poetics with the history of antagonistic classes: “while Marx emplotted the history of the
bourgeoisie as a Tragedy, that of the proletariat is set within the larger framework of a Comedy,
the resolution of which consists in the dissolution of all classes and the transformation of hu-
manity into an organic whole” (1973, 313). While it is true that, as I have pointed out, Marx as-
sumes the proletarian drama to resolve itself in a non-tragic manner, to term it “Comedy” means
to belittle the strongly tragic dimension to the proletariat’s struggles that will lead to the eventual
non-tragic resolution. By contrast, Marx regards the history of the bourgeoisie merely as tragic as
long as it was still a socio-revolutionary class, from the ‘Bloody Revolution’ in England in 1648
to the end of the French Revolution. After the latter revolution, for Marx the genre in which
this class enacts its history is farce and not tragedy. Therefore the bourgeoisie’s eventual downfall
will amount to a pathetic but hardly tragic event.
348

37). Marx aims to achieve this effect in his readers by shifting markedly from satire
or outright bathos (the hallmark of most of his articles in the NRhZ) to tragic
pathos. The parodistic tone that is characteristic of Marx’s depiction of the farce of
the bourgeois revolution is notably absent when he depicts the tragic defeat of the
proletariat’s first attempt at social revolution.
The change of rhetorical mode has to do with Marx’s view of the June Insurrec-
tion as being a unique event in revolutionary history up to that time. For the first
time in the European Revolutions of 1848/49 its latent social content, the class
struggle between bourgeoisie and proletariat, emerges. Both before and afterwards
class conflict remained hidden while the political forms took centre stage. As Marx
meta-textually points out, a key shift has happened from the bourgeois political
revolution in February 1848, that he ironically entitles “die schöne Revolution,” to
the proletarian social revolution in June 1848 as the “die häßliche Revolution”:

Die Februarrevolution war die schöne Revolution, die Revolution der all-
gemeinen Sympathie, weil die Gegensätze, die in ihr gegen das Königtum
eklatierten, unentwickelt, einträchtig nebeneinander schlummerten, weil
der soziale Kampf, der ihren Hintergrund bildete, nur eine luftige Existenz
gewonnen hatte, die Existenz der Phrase, des Worts. Die Junirevolution ist
die häßliche Revolution, die abstoßende Revolution, weil an die Stelle der
Phrase die Sache getreten ist, weil die Republik das Haupt des Ungeheuers
selbst entblößte, indem sie ihm die schirmende und versteckende Krone
abschlug. (MEW V, 134; Marx’s emphasis)

Again using a metaphor originating from theatre, Marx maintains that “der soziale
Kampf ” has moved from the “Hintergrund” of the revolutionary stage to centre
stage. However, as the subsequent course of the revolution proved, this was a mo-
mentary flashpoint of social war. As he insists in Der achtzehnte Brumaire – echo-
ing the same theatre metaphor – “[m]it dieser Niederlage tritt das Proletariat in
den Hintergrund der revolutionären Bühne” (MEGA XI, 105; Marx’s emphasis).
This transformation from political to social revolution also necessitates a change
in the rhetorical and poetological approach of the representation of revolution. No
longer does the socialist writer, through pointed irony, need to expose the hidden
social dimension behind battles that were mainly fought at the level of rhetoric
and language during the February days. In June when the hidden class, “der soziale
Kampf,” has tangibly materialised itself in the slaughter on the street of Paris, the
commentator instead has to employ tragic pathos to emphasise the world-historic
importance of this dramatic event. This change in Marx’s rhetoric from irony to
gravity, from bathos to pathos becomes very evident in the following passage with
 349

which Marx exposes the major illusions of the bourgeois political revolution, the
brotherhood beyond social class. The socioeconomic, “der Krieg der Arbeit und
des Kapitals,” erupts in a class war, the “Bürgerkrieg, in seiner schrecklichsten Ge-
stalt.” For the representation of this sublime revolutionary conflict the satiric mode
is inadequate. The catastrophe that the proletarian hero experiences is dramatised
in the language of tragic pathos:

Die Fraternité, die Brüderlichkeit der entgegengesetzten Klassen, von denen

die eine die andere exploitiert, diese Fraternité, im Februar proklamiert, mit
großen Buchstaben auf die Stirne von Paris geschrieben, auf jedes Gefäng-
nis, auf jede Kaserne – ihr wahrer, unverfälschter, ihr prosaischer Ausdruck,
das ist der – Bürgerkrieg, der Bürgerkrieg in seiner fürchterlichsten Gestalt,
der Krieg der Arbeit und des Kapitals. Diese Brüderlichkeit flammte vor
allen Fenstern von Paris am Abend des 25. Juni, als das Paris der Bourgeoi-
sie illuminierte, während das Paris des Proletariats verbrannte, verblutete,
verächzte. (MEW V, 134; Marx’s emphasis)

Very pointedly Marx in this passage contrasts the satiric and the tragic modes of
representation, as he switches between them throughout this article. Describing
the night the June Insurrection was defeated, Marx further invokes a sharp con-
trast between two revolutionary spectacles that are being staged simultaneously:
a macabre farce and a sublime tragedy. The farcical bourgeois revolution finds its
apotheosis not in the crushing of the proletarian revolt, but ironically in the absurd
celebration of a victory, which – as Marx suggests throughout his article – contains
the seeds of the future downfall of this class. Any notion of fraternity, that the
republican rhetoric had celebrated numerous times, went up in smoke during that
class war. Whereas before it was still possible for the most repressive institutions of
social discipline – such as the military or the prison – to use the term ‘fraternity’
now this has become farcical in the face of the proletarians dying in the street. The
bourgeois victory is too dearly purchased as to be worth celebration. By contrast,
the suffering of the dying proletariat is cast in the tragic mode, as the almost melo-
dramatic triple alliteration “verbrannte, verblutete, verächzte” illustrates. However,
the reflection of these fires in all the windows of Paris also casts an almost grotesque
light on the scene of the bourgeois celebrations of victories and serves as a powerful
reminder that the spectre of proletarian social revolution still looms large.78

78 The anonymous commentator in an article on the June Insurrection that appeared on the same
day as Marx’s editorial (1 July 1848) in the Chartist paper The Northern Star also seems to sug-
gests that an enactment of two dramas is taking place: a heroic proletarian tragedy with the
proletariat as its fallen and suffering hero and, subsequently, a sordid state play enacted by the
350

Again Marx is not the only German socialist author who reaches such a dialecti-
cal poetics of revolution between during the 1848/49 Revolutions. Weerth in the
conclusion of the final chapter of the book version of his picaresque satirical novel
Leben und Taten des berühmten Ritters Schnapphanski (1848/49) conjures up a sim-
ilar dramatically sharp contrast between the bourgeois political and the proletarian
social revolution.79 Marx does this in a passage: between the “Paris der Bourgeoisie”
which celebrates its Pyrrhic victory over the crushed proletarian revolution and the
“Paris des Proletariats” in which the proletarian revolutionaries are simultaneously
dying an agonising death. In the final chapter (XXII) of Schnapphanski, entitled
“Der Gürzenich,” Weerth depicts in a highly satirical and amusing manner the
meal that took place in the eponymous venue in Cologne on 15 August 1848
to celebrate the occasion of the sixth ‘Dombaufest’ of the Cologne Cathedral.
For Weerth this enormously popular celebration of national-liberal revolutionary
propaganda marked the climax of the bourgeois revolutionary farce that already
carried all the seeds of the eventual counterrevolution in it. As he scathingly reveals
in the first paragraph that he added for the book version in 1849, under the cloak
of the propagandistic bourgeois revolutionary lies, all the atrocities of the counter-
revolution were already planned:

Ja, vorüber war die große kölnische Domfarce, bei der all die hohen Herrn
mit den schönsten Phrasen im Munde, aber den Groll im Herzen, unter
dem Jubel des törichten Volkes all die feinen Pläne ersannen, welche bald in
den standrechtlichen Erschießungen Wiens, in der Oktroyierung der preu-
ßischen und österreichischen Verfassung und in dem Lächerlichwerden der
Frankfurter Versammlung so treffliche Früchte tragen sollten. (Weerth 1957
IV, 488)

republican bourgeois victors: “Those barbarous ruffians, those middle class heroes, led their
prisoners into the Gardens of the Tuileries, in fifties and hundreds, and there butchered them
in cold blood in front of that Palace, from which the brave sufferers had ejected the despot in
February last; and the result of their heroism, upon that occasion, is the establishment of a mili-
tary despotism, in which the following perpetrators of the ‘Massacre of June,’ are to be the new
actors. [It follows a list of the new French government with General Cavaignac as its leader]”
(Anonymous 1848b, 6). While the I do not want to suggest that this equals Marx’s dialectic
of tragedy and farce, it seems obvious that the ‘new’ pathetic play that the new government is
enacting has already been marked out as farcical right from its beginning. With the proletar-
ian heroes having been massacred, the remaining cast of “middle class heroes” stages a perverse
parody of the preceding proletarian heroic drama.
79 Most of the chapters appeared in serialised form in the NRhZ and often differed quite consid-
erably from their book versions. The novel was published in 1849 by Hoffmann & Campe in
Hamburg.
 351

Weerth here unmasks the irresolvable paradoxes and ideological delusions of the
bourgeois revolution at least as sharply as Marx. Like Marx he also claims that they
will necessarily lead to the counterrevolutionary spectacle. Furthermore, like Marx,
Weerth also constructs an opposition between the phrases, “den schönsten Phrasen”
of the bourgeoisie, on the surface, and their hidden content, their anti-proletarian
ideology. While in August 1848 the jubilation of the deluded “törichten Volkes”
still obscured the counterrevolutionary content, it manifested shortly in a mixture
of tragic and comical events ranging from public executions to the National As-
sembly complicity in the revolutionary farce, its “Lächerlichwerden.” However,
even this tragicomic failure of the bourgeois revolutions, which in Weerth’s Marx-
ist view had been an anachronism from the beginning, would still have been a
matter for satire and laughter, if it had not included at the same time the brutal and
tragic defeat of the proletarian social revolutionaries in Paris, Vienna, and Berlin:

Ja, vorüber war dies Fest des widerlichsten Kokettierens mit dem dummen
souveränen Michel, und wir würden vielleicht noch darüber lachen, wenn
uns durch den schimmernden Haufen dieser “volksfreundlichen” Fürsten,
dieser feilen Knechte und dieser düpierten Volksrepräsentanten nicht die
kugelzerrissenen Leichen der Proletarier von Paris, von Wien und Berlin
angrinsten, [...] doch genug! der Humor ist versiegt; das Buch ist zu Ende.
(Weerth 1957 IV, 488)

In the same manner as Marx’s editorial on the June Insurrection, this final passage
of Weerth’s Schnapphanski not only merges the satiric tone with gothic pathos,
but also sharply contrasts revolutionary farce and tragedy. While the bourgeois
“düpierten Volksvertreter” are part of the revolutionary farce, “die kugelzerissenen
Leichen der Proletarier” belong to the genre of revolutionary tragedy. The gro-
tesque image of the revolutions of 1848/49 that Weerth evokes comprises both
the tragic and the anti-tragic. This uneasy mixture emerges most strikingly in the
depiction of the facial expressions of the proletarian bodies. In the death they seem
to be eerily alive, when their distorted faces appear to be grinning at the spectators
(“angrinsten”).80 While their dying face seems to poke fun at the duped bourgeoisie,
it also serves as a horrible reminder that the proletarian social revolution – at least
for the moment – has been tragically defeated. While the farce of the bourgeois po-
litical revolution can only be adequately dealt with in the satiric mode, regarding

80 Weerth here also seems to hark back to Freiligrath’s gothic socio-revolutionary poem “Die Tod-
ten an die Lebenden” (July 1848). In this poem the appearance of the mutilated bodies of
the dead proletarian revolutionaries is described in grim detail to incite the listeners to socio-
revolutionary action.
352

the proletarian revolutionary tragedies, humour is insufficient.81 The satirist Weerth

notices, like the satirist Marx, that in the face of the defeat of the proletarian so-
cial revolution, at the sight of “die kugelzerrissenen Leichen der Proletarier von
Paris, von Wien und Berlin,” the tragic mode of revolutionary pathos is required.
Although Weerth ventures into this very mode in this final paragraph of his great
satiric novel on the German bourgeois revolution, he acknowledges that his book
cannot deal with the tragic aspects of the revolutions of 1848/49. This is only
possible through outright revolutionary pathos, as the final paragraph of Marx’s
editorial on the June Insurrection displays:

Aber die Plebejer, vom Hunger zerrissen, von der Presse geschmäht, von den
Ärzten verlassen, von den Honetten Diebe gescholten, Brandstifter, Galee-
rensklaven, ihre Weiber und Kinder in noch grenzenloseres Elend gestürzt,
ihre besten Lebenden über die See deportiert – ihnen den Lorbeer um die
drohend finstere Stirn zu winden, das ist das Vorrecht, das ist das Recht der
demokratischen Presse. (MEW V, 137; Marx’s emphasis)

The ending of Weerth’s Schnapphanski, like Marx’s editorial on the June Insurrec-
tion, foregrounds the pivotal importance of the momentary catastrophe of the pro-
letarian social revolution. It also exposes how the myth of the political bourgeois
political revolution, which acted as the driving force for the high drama and trag-
edy of the French Revolution, had become a lowly farce in 1848/49. However, it
does not dispel Marx’s firm conviction that the eventual victory of the proletarian
social revolution will be inevitable. Marx celebrates in his editorial the momentary
catastrophe of the proletarian social revolution, which becomes obvious in the fi-
nal rhetorical gesture when he crowns the “finster-drohende Stirn” of the defeated
proletarians with a laurel wreath, the adornment traditionally bestowed onto the
triumphant victor. As I have pointed out, the grin of Weerth’s dead proletarians is
much more ambiguous, since it is not clear whether they are grinning at the duped
bourgeoisie, the victorious forces of reaction, or whether the grin forms just an
expression of the pain of their death throes.

81 Bernd Füllner also comments on Weerth’s remarks on the inadequacy of his satirical style to deal
with the socio-political situations after the failure of 1848/49: “Der ursprünglich vorhandene
Glaube und die Hoffnung, mit Hilfe einer offenen Schreibart und literarischen Technik, bei
der Ironie und Satire ein wesentliches Moment darstellen, die (historische) Gegenwart einzuho-
len, ist inzwischen durch die gesellschaftliche und politische Entwicklung der Revolutionsjahrs
1848/49 eingeholt und überholt worden” (2001, 370-371).
 353

Post-Revolutionary Poetics: The End of Traditional Revolutionary Literature

Yet this ambiguity at the end of Schnapphanski does not necessarily mean that
Weerth in 1849, with the defeat of the revolutions, abandoned all hope in the
proletarian social revolution as has been maintained by some Weerth critics.82 He
voices a belief in proletarian social revolution in his last political article in the final
number of the NRhZ (No. 301/19 May 1849) that was printed entirely in red, the
colour of socialism. Writing about Great Britain, he reaffirms his shattered faith
in the English proletariat as the socio-revolutionary vanguard of Europe. During
“dem Zuge der Revolution durch Italien, durch Frankreich, durch Deutschland
und dem Osten Europas” (Weerth 1957 IV, 277), Britain was often not worth
turning one’s attention to. Now, however, after the drama of the European revolu-
tions is over, Britain is again regarded as the place of revolutionary hope, as the
starting place of the future European proletarian social revolution:

Doch was auch von der Donau bis Rheine geschah, wir vergessen darüber
nicht das geringste Ereignis in der Weiterentwicklung jenes großen Landes,
das mit seiner chartistischen Arbeiterbevölkerung dazu bestimmt ist, einst in
der revolutionären Bewegung der Welt den Ausschlag zu geben. [...] Immer ver-
zweifelter greift die Bourgeoisie nach den letzten Mitteln, die sie retten kön-
nen. Bald wird sie sich vergeblich nach neuen Auswegen umsehen, und die
eherne Notwendigkeit wird dann jenen Sieg der Chartisten herbeiführen,
der das Signal der sozialen Umwälzung der alten Welt ist. [...] Der Sturz Alt-
Englands ist der Sturz der modernen bürgerlichen Gesellschaft, der Sturz
der Bourgeois-Herrschaft, der Sieg der arbeitenden Klasse. (Weerth 1957
IV, 277 & 279-280; Weerth’s emphasis)

When the Chartists will have overthrown the socioeconomic order in Britain,
Weerth asserts, the drama of the proletarian social revolution will then also finally
begin in the other European states. In May 1849, even after the failure of the
revolutions of 1848/49, Weerth still seems to be as convinced as Marx and Engels
were in Das Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei (February 1848) that through
“ihre revolutionäre Vereinigung durch die Assoziation” (cf. MEW IV, 474) the
proletarians eventually will manage to break the chains that their exploitative and
alienated labour in the capitalist process of productions imposes on them. As I
have indicated in the first chapter, Shelley in “Song to the Men of England” had

82 See for instance Kurt Holzapfel’s verdict that after 1848/49 Weerth became an unpolitical dandy
in the style of a Baudelaire (1976, 111-113). For differing views, see Zemke 1972, 191 and
Büttner 1993, 144.
354

illustrated how the capitalist process of production forced the English proletarians
to dig their own grave as well as that of the pre-industrialist society:

With plough and spade, and hoe and loom,

Trace your grave and build your tomb,
And weave your winding-sheet, till fair
England be your sepulchre. (ll. 29-32)

Thirty years later, the communist Weerth declares that the heirs of Shelley’s prole-
tarians will no longer put up with exploitation, with working themselves to death.
Instead of burying – as did their ancestors – the last remains of a preindustrial
social order in which the system of moral economy was believed to have reigned,
their heirs are now sounding the death knell to bourgeois capitalism. Not only will
the English proletarians rise up and destroy the capitalist system in Britain, but
they will also give the “Signal der Umwälzung der alten Welt.” “Der Sturz Alt-Eng-
lands” will mark the beginning of the drama of the worldwide proletarian social
revolution which will end with the “Sturz der modernen bürgerlichen Gesellschaft,
de[m] Sturz der Bourgeois-Herrschaft, de[m] Sieg der arbeitenden Klasse” (Weerth
1957 IV, 280). By standing up in transnational, united socio-revolutionary action,
the proletarians will stop digging their own graves, as they have done so through
their exploited work, and turn into the “Totengräber” of bourgeois society instead,
as Marx and Engels assert in Das Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei. Like Marx
and Engels, Weerth seems also still convinced – even after the experience of the
failure of the June Insurrection in 1848 – that the bourgeoisie’s “Untergang und
der Sieg des Proletariats sind gleich unvermeidlich” (cf. MEW IV, 474). Unlike
earlier revolutions, the proletarian social revolution will not conjure up the ghost
of previous revolutions, but rather lay them to rest, Marx insists.
To depict this novel type of revolution, a new poetics of revolution is required
that no longer looks back to traditional models. Marx asserts in Der achtzehnte
Brumaire that neither the established categories of comedy, tragedy, or farce will
suffice to describe the radical break with the revolutionary tradition:

Die soziale Revolution des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts kann ihre Poesie

nicht aus der Vergangenheit schöpfen, sondern nur aus der Zukunft. Sie
kann nicht mit sich selbst beginnen, bevor sie allen Aberglauben an die
Vergangenheit abgestreift hat. Die früheren Revolutionen bedurften der
weltgeschichtlichen Rückerinnerungen, um über ihren eigenen Inhalt zu
betäuben. Die Revolution des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts muß die Todten
ihre Todten begraben lassen, um bei ihrem eignen Inhalt anzukommen.
 355
Dort ging die Phrase über den Inhalt, hier geht der Inhalt über die Phrase
hinaus. (MEGA XI, 101)

The social content of the revolutionary drama takes centre stage in the proletar-
ian revolution over the political forms in which it previously had been expressed.
The June Insurrection of 1848 constitutes the first instance of the long process
of breaking “gänzlich mit der Vergangenheit” (cf. MEW V, 133). This requires a
new poetics as well as a new literary representation of revolution, a new “Poesie”
of revolution, which Marx attempts through the literary and poetic approach that
characterises his social and economic analysis of the 1848/49 Revolutions in Der
achtzehnte Brumaire.
Weerth, who in his revolutionary poetry tried to revive traditional forms such
as the ballad and the epic poem for his socialist revolutionary aims, shares Marx’s
opinion that after the 1848/49 a novel kind of socio-revolutionary literature is
needed. This can neither be found in the literary political satires that Weerth ex-
celled at, nor in the poetic apotheosis of the revolutionary event. Instead it seeks
its raison d’être in the ‘literary’ analysis of socioeconomic developments. Weerth
implies such a paradigm shift for future socialist revolutionary literature in a letter
to Ferdinand Lassalle from 3 May 1851 in which he emphatically announces: “Der
Handel ist für mich das weiteste Leben, die höchste Poesie” (Weerth 1989 II, 606).
As he asserts in a letter to Marx (28 April 1851) – which has often been quoted
as proof for Weerth’s utter disillusionment with the idea of revolutionary change
and his final departure from socialism – the satirical depiction of the bourgeoisie
in what traditionally has been considered literary texts is no longer productive after
the failure of the 1848/49 Revolutions:

Ich habe in der letzten Zeit allerlei geschrieben, aber nichts beendigt, denn
ich sehe gar keinen Zweck, kein Ziel bei der Schriftstellerei. Wenn Du etwas
über Nationalökonomie schreibst, so hat das Sinn und Verstand. Aber ich?
Dürftige Witze, schlechte Späße reißen, um den vaterländischen Fratzen ein
blödes Lächeln abzulocken – wahrhaftig ich kenne nichts Erbärmlicheres!
Meine schriftstellerische Tätigkeit ging entschieden mit der “Neuen Rhei-
nischen Zeitung” zugrunde. (Weerth 1989 II, 600; Weerth’s emphasis)

Alluding to the first stanza of his eponymous mock-epic on the German revolu-
tionary farce – “Kein schöner Ding ist auf der Welt / Als seine Feinde zu beißen, /
Als über all die plumpen Geselln / Seine lustigen Witze zu reißen” (Weerth 1956
I, 269) – Weerth implies that post 1848/49 both a new poetics and a new type
of revolutionary literature is needed. This new form of socialist revolutionary lit-
356

erature he identifies in Marx’s poetic essays on national economy. Weerth suggests

that unlike any new satirical or socio-revolutionary poems that he could write,
Marx’s socioeconomic texts do not form an anachronism, but contain an avant-
garde revolutionary poetry that combine a rigorous critique of the existing socio-
economic conditions with a powerful rhetoric of future transformation.
Conclusion

This study has shown that the shift from a concept of political revolution to one of
social revolution constitutes a key characteristic of the entire range of German and
British revolutionary discourse in the period from 1819 to 1848/49 (pamphlets,
newspaper articles, poetry, plays, socio-philosophical essays, etc.). Thus it addresses
a major gap in the study of 19th-century revolutionary literature. The inter-discur-
sive, intertextual, and interdisciplinary methodology has enabled a fresh approach
to this idea. For instance, it has been vital in refuting some prevalent critical mis-
conceptions such as the myth of Heine as a socio-revolutionary poet, and the view
of Börne as an anachronistic Jacobin republican writer.
While, as I have pointed out, social historians such as Walter Grab and Wolf-
gang Büttner have often very successfully overcome the boundaries separating his-
tory and literature in their analysis of revolutionary writing of the period, literary
critics have proven very reluctant to go beyond the realm of nonfictional, non-
literary texts. This study, on the other hand, has made the case that to appreciate
the inter-discursive nature of the contemporary revolutionary discourse it is vital
to exchange traditional philology for a radical socio-historical and political-ideo-
logical approach. In this period, literature and history overlap to such a degree that
it is impossible to have recourse to a traditional literary aesthetic. As Ludwig Börne
announces in a programmatic statement, history now determines the poetics of
political literature. Coming very close to anticipating Hayden White’s study of
historiography and literature as two closely related textual genres, Börne radically
denies political literature any autonomous aesthetic laws: “Die Poesie der Zeit ist
in die Geschichte getreten. Sie fliegt nach einem anderen Rhythmus als den sechs-
füßigen […]” (Quoted in Hinderer 1974, 361). Börne’s statement also highlights
the need for a novel and critical approach to texts beyond traditional philology:
one that engages with a wide range of different texts, irrespective of whether they
are classified as ‘literary’, ‘historical,’ ‘economical’ or ‘political.’ Future analysis and
investigation have to consider that revolutionary discourse decisively transcends
any of the artificial disciplinary boundaries imposed by academia.
To realise the full potential, however, of the interdisciplinary method that the
revolutionary literature of this period calls for, increased collaboration between
358

the disciplines of literature, social and political history, economics, and political
science is necessary. Many shortcomings of this study may have arisen from the
fact that I, as literary and cultural critic, have had to rely on the research of social
historians, political economists, and some theorists from other disciplines without
being able to evaluate and judge it critically. Moreover, it was unfortunately not al-
ways possible to draw upon the personal expertise of specialists from the respective
fields, let alone for a social historian or a political theorist to become a co-author of
this study. However, if one were to make a truly interdisciplinary contribution to
the research of revolutionary discourse, working together with specialists in disci-
plines other than literary or cultural studies will prove vital. As for instance the so-
cial historian Wolfgang Häusler, who himself crossed closely guarded disciplinary
boundaries (e.g. 1987 & 2001), prophetically asserts (while discussing Nestroy’s
revolutionary farces) that such collaboration is crucial for the further investigation
of political literature:

Die Überprüfung des Realitätsgehalt der Nestroyschen Gestalten anhand

der zeitgenössischen Publizistik ist eine noch von Literaturwissenschaftlern
und Sozialhistorikern gemeinsam zu lösende Aufgabe. (Häusler 1979, 91)

This study has strongly shown the need for such future interdisciplinary research
projects. While literary critics may have most to gain from the expertise of schol-
ars from other disciplines in their analysis of political literature, the profit is not
unidirectional. As my approach to reading Marx, not only as a seminal theorist of
revolution but also as a writer of revolutionary literature, has shown, textual criti-
cism can reveal a hitherto neglected poetic dimension in what have traditionally
been considered to be merely fictional socio-philosophical and socio-political texts.
Reciprocally, my investigation of Weerth’s revolutionary literature has challenged
the commonly held view of him as being a socialist poet of questionable talent.
Instead, this study has revealed how he is seminal both for the development of
a Marxist cultural aesthetic and the ideological advancement of Marxist socio-
political theory.
The cultural and the socio-political, the aesthetic and the ideological realms
merge perhaps most closely in what I have termed “The Poetics of Revolution.”
While I have dealt with it primarily in the context of Marx’s and Weerth’s writ-
ings (since the parallels between their contemporary concepts are the most tangi-
ble), this area constitutes a vast field for further collaborative interdisciplinary and
comparative research. As I have hinted to occasionally, it is helpful to investigate
to what extent Georg Büchner, in his depiction of the bourgeois revolutionary
 359

actions as “Affenkomödie” (Büchner 2002 II, 377) and in his representation of

the abortive proletarian socio-revolutionary attempts in Dantons Tod and Leonce
und Lena as tragic, anticipates the Marxist antithesis of farce and tragedy.1 The
opposite move, chronologically forwards into the 20th century, appears to me to
be equally called for. It would be worthwhile to discuss whether, for instance, Pe-
ter Weiß, in his revolutionary drama Die Verfolgung und Ermordung des Jean Paul
Marats (1965), is engaged in developing a poetics of revolution for his time when
he discusses the antithesis of political and social revolution in a manner closely
reminiscent of Dantons Tod.2 The questions of socio-political consciousness and
unconsciousness, of the tragic and the non-tragic in historical and socioeconomic
processes raised by Marx’s and Weerth’s poetics of revolution point towards Brecht,
who in plays such as Mutter Courage and ihre Kinder (1941), Das Leben des Gali-
lei (1943), etc., problematises these views. One could argue that Brecht was also
participating in the wider project of establishing a Marxist poetics of history and
revolution. Leaving the Marxist paradigm, one might also investigate ideologically
different poetics of revolution. As for instance Mary Jacobus has illustrated (1983),
the conservative Romantic poets, such as the later Wordsworth and Coleridge, in
their reaction to the French Revolution, as well as its most prominent contem-
porary critic Edmund Burke in his Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790),
also establish a poetics of revolution that revolves around dramatic metaphors.3
For Burke, the French Revolution constitutes a drama that oscillates between the
sublime and the pathetic, high tragedy and the burlesque farce. The conservative
poetics of the French Revolution in the period discussed in this study also deal
with this event through metaphors of drama. For instance, Thomas Carlyle, in his
history The French Revolution (1837), casts the revolutionary events as a lamentably
and sublimely tragic spectacle. When he presents the fall of Danton as high trag-
edy, this portrait contrasts sharply with Büchner’s contemporary, and much more
ironic, fictionalisation of this event in Dantons Tod as a tragicomedy or even farce.
Before such political-aesthetic and textual criticism can gain wider currency,
however, a different critical paradigm has first to be established. It is essential to
depart from the traditional – but still widely adhered to – aesthetic of literary criti-

1 For two essays that discuss in how far Dantons Tod could be read with Marx’s poetics of revolu-
tion, see Hinderer 1981, 191-199 and Pormann 1990. Ute Berns tries to apply it to both Dan-
ton’s Tod and Beddoes’ Death’s Jest-Book (2005).
2 For an attempt to read both Marat/Sade and Dantons Tod with Marx’s poetics and revolution, see
my forthcoming essay (Hörmann 2011a).
3 The political scientists Paul Hindson and Tim Gray (1988) have further shown how his concep-
tion of political events as drama forms a cornerstone of Burke’s political theory.
360

cism that privileges the analysis of the aesthetic over the ideological. I hope to have
largely avoided such a pitfall by genuinely trying to engage with the interrelation-
ship between the aesthetic, the cultural and the social-material realm. At the same
time I also hope to have shown that is possible to go beyond the present obsession
with material objects in cultural studies, without boring the reader to death with
tedious, anachronistic discussions about whether an author or a concept conforms
with Marxist orthodoxy. Finally, I hope that the reader has had such moments
when reading this study as I experienced during the long process of writing and
re-editing this study: when she or he was astounded how topical many these texts
from the 19th century still appear and how little their demand for social freedom
for the majority of the world’s population has been fulfilled. Maybe now as Marx
is slowly re-emerging from the basement of history, to which has been confined for
nearly two decades, a fresh look at the challenges that the socialist tradition still
poses to our dominant notion of social transformation is more necessary than it
has been for a long time? Such a new perspective on the writings and theories not
just of Marx but also on those of his many precursors and successors that looks
at them through the lens of many unsolved problems of today’s global world will
prove a monumental task. If at all it can only to be achieved through genuinely
interdisciplinary of political scientists, social historians, social economists, philoso-
phers, etc., that might even include the odd literary, cultural or textual critic.
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