Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne

A work by Marx exposing and attacking the Prussian police against the communist movement. Written from the end of October to the beginning of December 1852. The original text, in German, was issued in 1853 in Basle as the pamphlet Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne.

In 1852, in order to suppress the revolutionary movement of the proletariat, the Prussian judicial authorities, without any convincing evidence, arrested seven of the 11 members of the Communist League on the trumped-up charge of “treason” by despicable means such as “espionage, falsification of evidence, fabrications”. In order to expose the truth about the Communist trial in Cologne which persecuted the members of the Communist League, planned by the reactionary Prussian government, and the criminal acts committed by the police authorities, Marx wrote this critical political commentary.

In this work, firstly, Marx explained the proceedings of the trial in Cologne, comprehensively exposed the acts of the reactionary Prussian police authorities in framing the representatives of the revolutionary class and the ugly face of the counter-revolution, and severely attacked the hypocritical, reactionary and rotten Prussian legal system, police bureaucracy and state system, and condemned the despicable counter-revolutionary act of the Prussian judicial authorities in imposing the crime of treason on members of the League of Communists. Then, he criticized the adventurist and erroneous tactics of the Willich-Schapper group, which was politically detached from the masses and seriously undermined the workers’ movement, as well as its erroneous voluntarist point of view on the question of the driving forces of revolution, and opposed its adventurist standpoint of instantly staging armed uprisings. Further, Marx elaborated on several theoretical and tactical questions concerning proletarian revolution, pointed out the protracted and arduous nature of proletarian revolution (in Germany), and emphasized the need for the proletariat to pay attention to revolutionary theoretical and tactical questions such as accumulating revolutionary forces, waiting for the time of the revolution, not rushing to achieve success so as to avoid committing the error of adventurism.

Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne is an important document of Marxism, and in this “highly illuminating document”, Marx elaborated the relevant theories and tactics of the proletarian revolution, which are of great practical guiding significance to the proletarian revolutionary movement.