The Crisis and the Counter-Revolution

A group of articles by Marx reviewing the Berlin Cabinet Crisis. Written in September 1848, four articles in total. First published in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung on September 12, 13, 14, and 16, 1848.

After the outbreak of the German Revolution in March 1848, King Frederick William IV of Prussia was forced to agree to the convening of the National Assembly, the reorganization of the government, and the drawing up a constitution. Subsequently, in March a government of led by Prime Minister Camphausen, and Hansemann as its finance minister, which represented both the big bourgeoisie, and the Junkers class was established and in May, of the same year the German National Assembly was convened in Frankfurt. At a meeting of the Frankfurt National Assembly, Camphausen submitted a draft constitution, which stipulated that Prussia should establish a constitutional monarchy, a kind of Parliamentary democracy which also gave the king great powers. Deeply discontented with this attempt, the German people living in the Prussia state began to wage a struggle against the local Prussian Imperial state. The crisis was set off by a conflict between the Prussian crown (in Berlin) and the Berlin Constituent Assembly because of the demand for the dismissal of reactionary officers and the attitude of the Frankfurt National Assembly to the armistice of Malmš in the German-Danish war over Schleswig-Holstein. Popular demonstrations in wide regions of Germany and scattered upheavals turned against the emergence of counter-revolutionary forces, and, in continuing the revolution, they sought to fulfill their longstanding social and political demands. On September 7, when the news of the collapse of the government announced, people went to the Berlin Constituent Assembly building to express their support to the government. The reactionary forces which were centered in Prussia and which gathered around the king immediately launched a counter attack on the people. To support and inspire the revolutionary struggle of the German people, Marx wrote this serial commentary.

The Crisis and the Counter-Revolution fiercely criticized the compromise and weakness of the bourgeois government which was formed after the March Revolution (1848) in Germany. Marx argued that the bourgeois government led by Camphausen and Hansemann openly violated the constitutional principles of the Frankfurt National Assembly, compromised with the reactionary forces and formed an alliance with them, and retained a whole set of old bureaucratic apparatus, thus, put the state power under the complete control of the reactionary feudal monarchy. Therefore, Marx pointed: “if the reactionary forces represented by the king are victorious, and a cabinet led the Prince of Prussia is established, then they will dissolve the Berlin Assembly, the right of association abolished, the press muzzled, an electoral law based on property qualifications will be introduced, and, as we have already mentioned, even the authority of United Provincial Diet (Senate) may be reinvoked—and all this will be done under cover of a military dictatorship, guns and bayonets”. Consequently, Marx called on the democratic parties and the broad masses of the people to take revolutionary action, oppose the imperial cabinet, destroy the royal power which aims to subordinate and coexist with the parliament, form a left-wing cabinet, safeguard the fruits of the revolution, and make the king a servant of the people who will only receive a salary.

The Crisis and the Counter-Revolution analyzed the situation and causes of the German Government Crisis in Berlin, revealed the reactionary nature of this government, and promoted the development of the revolutionary situation in Germany.