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will be equal to her principles, i.e. can she achieve a revolution that will not only raise her to the official level of modern peoples but to the human level that is the immediate future of these peoples?'75 By way of a preliminary answer, Marx recapitulated his previous conclusion:
The weapon of criticism cannot, of course, supplant the criticism of weapons; material force must be overthrown by material force. But theory, too, will become material force as soon as it seizes the masses. Theory is capable of seizing the masses as soon as its proofs are ad htrminem and its proofs are ad hominem as soon as it is radical. To be radical is to grasp the matter by the root. But for man the root is man himself. The manifest proof of the radicalism of German theory and its practical energy is that it starts from the decisive and positive abolition of religion. The criticism of religion ends with the doctrine that man is for himself the highest being - that is, with the categorical imperative to overthrow all systems in which man is humiliated, enslaved, abandoned and despised.74
The importance of the 'weapon of criticism' for Germany was shown by Luther's revolution of theory - the Reformation. Of course this revolution was an incomplete one: Luther had merely internalised man's religious consciousness; he had 'destroyed faith in authority by restoring the authority of faith'.75 But although Protestantism had not found the true solution, at least its formulation of the problem had been correct. The present situation of Germany was similar to that which preceded the Reformation; the only difference was that philosophy took the place of theology and the result would be a human emancipation instead of one that took place entirely within the sphere of religion.
In the final, pregnant pages of the article Marx drew from his sombre review of the German scene the optimistic conclusion that the revolution in Germany, as opposed to France, could not be partial and had to be radical; and only the proletariat, in alliance with philosophy, would be capable of carrying it out. Marx began with the difficulties that seemed to stand in the way of a radical German revolution. 'Revolutions need a passive element, a material basis. A theory will only be implemented among a people in so far as it is the implementation of what it needs.'76 And 'a radical revolution can only be a revolution of radical needs whose presuppositions and breeding-ground seem precisely to be lacking'.77 But the very fact that Germany was so deficient politically indicated the sort of future that awaited her: 'Germany is the political deficiencies of the present constituted into a world of their own and as such will not be able to break down specifically German barriers without breaking down the general barriers of the political present.'78 What was Utopian for Germany was not a radical revolution that would achieve the complete emancipation
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of mankind but a partial revolution, a revolution that was merely political, a revolution 'that leaves the pillars of the house still standing'.79 Marx then characterised a purely political revolution, obviously taking the French Revolution as his paradigm:
A part of civil society emancipates itself and achieves universal domination, a particular class undertakes the general emancipation of society from its particular situation. This class frees the whole of society, but only on the supposition that the whole of society is in the same situation as this class - that it possesses, or can easily acquire (for example) money and education.80
No class could occupy this 'special situation' in society without
arousing an impulse of enthusiasm in itself and among the masses. It is a moment when the class fraternizes with society in general and merges with society; it is identified with society and is felt and recognized as society's general representative. Its claims and rights are truly the claims and rights of society itself of which it is the real social head and heart.81
And for a class to be able to seize this emancipatory position, there had to be a polarisation of classes:
One particular class must be a class that rouses universal reprobation and incorporates all deficiencies: one particular social sphere must be regarded as the notorious crime of the whole society, so that the liberation of this sphere appears as universal self-liberation. So that one class par excellence may appear as the class of liberation, another class must conversely be the manifest class of oppression.82
This, according to Marx, was the situation in France before 1789 when 'the universally negative significance of the French nobility and clergy determined the universally positive significance of the class nearest to them and opposed to them: the bourgeoisie'.85
In Germany, the situation was very different. For there every class lacked the cohesion and courage that could cast it in the role of the negative representative of society, and every class also lacked the imagination to identify itself with the people at large. Class-consciousness sprang from the oppression of a lower class rather than from defiant protest against oppression from above. Progress in Germany was thus impossible, for every class was engaged in a struggle on more than one front:
Thus the princes are fighting against the king, the bureaucracy against the nobility, the bourgeoisie against all of them, while the proletariat is already beginning its fight against the bourgeoisie. The middle class scarcely dares to conceive of emancipation from its own point of view
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and already development in social circumstances and political theory make this point of view itself antiquated or at least problematical.84
Marx then summarised the contrast he had been elaborating between France and Germany:
In France it is enough that one should be something in order to wish to be all. In Germany one must be nothing, if one is to avoid giving up everything. In France partial emancipation is the basis of universal emancipation, in Germany universal emancipation is a sine qua non of every partial emancipation. In France it is the reality, in Germany the impossibility, of a gradual liberation that must give birth to total freedom. In France every class of the people is politically idealistic and is not primarily conscious of itself as a particular class but as a representative of general social needs. The role of emancipator thus passes in a dramatic movement to different classes of the French people until it comes to the class which no longer brings about social freedom by presupposing certain conditions that lie outside mankind and are yet created by human society, but which organizes the conditions of human existence by presupposing social freedom. In Germany, on the contrary, where practical life is as unintellectual as intellectual life is unpractical, no class of civil society has the need for, or capability of, achieving universal emancipation until it is compelled by its immediate situation, by material necessity and its own chains.85
This passage shows the importance of Marx's study of the French Revolution in the formation of his views. The Rhineland - where he was born and spent his early life - had been French until 1814, and had enjoyed the benefits of the French Revolution where civil emancipation was a genuine experience and not a possession of foreigners only, to be envied from afar. To all German intellectuals the French Revolution was the revolution, and Marx and his Young Hegelian friends constantly compared themselves to the heroes of 1789. It was his reading of the history of the French Revolution in the summer of 1843 that showed him the role of class struggle in social development.86
Approaching the conclusion of his article, Marx introduced the denouement with the question: 'So where is the real possibility of German emancipation?' His answer was:
. . . in the formation of a class with radical chains, a class in civil society that is not a class of civil society, the formation of a social group that is the dissolution of all social groups, the formation of a sphere that has a universal character because of its universal sufferings and lays claim to no particular right, because it is the object of no particular injustice but of injustice in general. This class can no longer lay claim to a historical status, but only to a human one. It is not in a one-sided
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opposition to the consequences of the German political regime; it is in total opposition to its presuppositions. It is, finally, a sphere that cannot emancipate itself without emancipating itself from all other spheres of society and thereby emancipating these other spheres themselves. In a word it is the complete loss of humanity and this can only recover itself by a complete redemption of humanity. This dissolution of society, as a particular class, is the proletariat.87
This passage raises an obvious and crucial question as to the reasons for Marx's sudden adherence to the cause of the proletariat. Some have claimed that Marx's description of the proletariat is non-empirical and thus that its ultimate source is Hegel's philosophy. It has, for example, been maintained that 'The insight into the world-historical role of the proletariat is obtained in a purely speculative manner by a "reversal" of the connection that Hegel had established between different forms of objective spirit.'88 Others have claimed that Hegel's insights were fundamentally those of a German Protestant and thus that Marx's underlying schema here was the Christian conception of salvation - the proletariat played the role of Isaiah's suffering servant:
Through Hegel, the young Marx links up, no doubt unconsciously, with the soteriological schema underlying the Judaeo-Christian tradition: the idea of the collective salvation obtained by a particular group, the theme of salvic destitution, the opposition of injustice that enslaves and generosity that frees. The proletariat, bringing universal salvation, plays a role analogous to that of the messianic community or personal saviour in biblical revelation.89
Or even more explicitly: 'That the universality of the proletariat echoes the claims of the universal Christ is confirmed by Marx's insistence that the proletariat will exist, precisely at the point when it becomes universal, in a scourged and emptied condition - and this, of course, is Marx's variant of the divine kenosis.'90 Others have claimed that, since Marx's views are not empirically based, this shows that they have their origin in a moral indignation at the condition of the proletariat.
All these interpretations are mistaken - at least as attempts at total explanation. Marx's proclamation of the key role of the proletariat was a contemporary application of the analysis of the French Revolution outlined earlier in his article, when he talked of a particular social sphere having 'to be regarded as the notorious crime of the whole society so that the liberation of this sphere appears as universal self-emancipation'.91 The proletariat was now in the position the French bourgeoisie had occupied in 1789. It was now the proletariat which could echo the words of Sieyes, 'I am nothing and I should be everything'. The context thus
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shows that Marx's account of the role of the proletariat was drawn from his study of the French Revolution, however much his language may be that of Young Hegelian journalism.
To this historical base was added a distillation of contemporary French socialist ideas. For three months already Marx had lived and worked with prominent socialists in Paris. The view of the proletariat contained in his article was not unique even in Young Hegelian circles, but it was of course commonplace in Paris.92
Marx's sudden espousal of the proletarian cause can be directly attributed (as can that of other early German communists such as Weitling and Hess) to his first-hand contacts with socialist intellectuals in France. Instead of editing a paper for the Rhineland bourgeoisie or sitting in his study in Kreuznach, he was now at the heart of socialist thought and action. He was living in the same house as Germain Maurer, one of the leaders of the League of the Just whose meetings he frequented. From October 1843 Marx was breathing a socialist atmosphere. It is not surprising that his surroundings made a swift impact on him.93
Marx admitted that the proletariat he described was only just beginning to exist in Germany - indeed, factory workers constituted no more than 4 per cent of the total male population over the age of fourteen.94 What characterised it was not natural poverty (though this had a part to play) but poverty that was artificially produced and resulted particularly in the disintegration of the middle class. The proletariat would achieve the dissolution of the old order of society by the negation of private property, a negation of which it was itself the embodiment. This was the class in which philosophy could finally give itself practical expression: 'As philosophy finds its material weapons in the proletariat, so the proletariat finds its intellectual weapons in philosophy, and as soon as the lightning of thought has struck deep into the virgin soil of the people, the emancipation of the Germans into men will be completed.'95 The signal for this revolution would come from France: 'When all internal conditions are fulfilled, the day of German resurrection will be heralded by the crowing of the Gallic cock.'96
The first double-number of the Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbiicher was also the last. Having clamped down on the Press inside Prussia, the Government there was particularly anxious to avoid the importation of seditious literature. The propagation of communist ideas was explicitly forbidden in Prussia and several of the articles in the Jahrbiicher had a distinctly socialist flavour. The German authorities acted swiftly: the journal was banned in Prussia, several hundred copies being seized on entry. Warrants were issued for the arrest of Marx, Heine and Ruge; and for the first time in his life Marx had become a political refugee. The Jahr-