with the “aristocratic caste,” which certainly started the movement, for the Polish Republic of the nobility was at any rate a huge advance compared with Russian despotism.38
Engels goes on to point out that the suffrage in France after the revolution of 1830 was restricted to some 250,000 voters and the rule of the French bourgeoisie was also based on the exploitation of the misera contribuens plebs. He does not argue that the bourgeois constitutional monarchy of Louis Philippe was a step forward as compared to the Bourbon restoration. He simply assumes that his audience, including the Kölnische Zeitung, takes that for granted.
But Engels does not leave it there. He is not content to defend national independence and representative institutions as progressive vis à vis absolutism and desirable ends to be fought for in their own right. In defending these basic democratic rights the Hungarian revolution has had to go farther:
The great Schwanbeck, [Eugen Alexis Schwanbeck, the Vienna correspondent of the Kölnische Zeitung] of course, is even less obliged to know that Hungary is the only country in which since the March revolution feudal burdens on the peasants have legally and in fact totally ceased to exist. The great Schwanbeck declares the Magyars to be an “aristocratic caste,” “most arrogant oppressors of the people,” . . . Schwanbeck does not know, or does not want to know, that the Magyar magnates, the Esterházys etc., deserted at the very beginning of the war and came to Olmütz [Austrian headquarters] to pay homage, and that it is precisely the “aristocratic” officers of the Magyar army who from the beginning of the struggle until now have every day carried out a fresh betrayal of their national cause! Otherwise, how is it that today the majority of the Chamber of Deputies is still with Kossuth in Debreczin, whereas only eleven magnates are to be found there?39
In another article, “Croats and Slovaks in Hungary,” Engels, discussing the fate of the “loyal” Slavic troops on the Imperial side, reports that the victorious Austrian authorities were restoring traditional Hungarian privileges despite their previous promises to the Slavs.
It is obvious that the aristocrat Windischgrätz knows full well that he can only achieve his goal of maintaining the power of the nobility in Hungary by maintaining the Magyar nobility in power. . . . having finished the business of subduing Hungary and restoring the rule of the aristocracy there, he will manage to deal with the Slavs . . .40
There is a great deal of material like this in Engels’ articles during 1849 dealing with disaffection within the ranks of the Imperial forces, which is largely ignored by most commentators. The whole issue of the disruptive effect of the social program of the Hungarian revolution within the non-Hungarian population is best dealt with in another section. Here, it is Engels’ stress on the disruptive effect of this program within Hungary that is relevant. In practically his last article on the subject he referred to the Polish example and emphasized that in Hungary too social revolution and national liberation are inextricably linked.
The Magyar war of 1849 has strong points of resemblance with the Polish war of 1830-31. But the great difference is that the factors which were against the Poles at the time now act in favor of the Magyars. Lelewel, as we know, unsuccessfully urged . . . that the mass of the population be bound to the revolution by emancipating the peasants and the Jews. . . . The Magyars started at the point which the Poles only achieved when it was too late. The Hungarians’ first measure was to carry out a social revolution in their country, to abolish feudalism . . .41
Again, as in the case of the insurrections in Cracow in 1846 and Prague in 1848, it was only the advanced minority that advocated this complete program of democratic revolution. And in this instance Engels appears to have been ignorant of the real political line-up. Kossuth was not the democrat portrayed in the columns of the NRZ. Alexander Petöfi and the radical students and workers in Budapest occupied that particular point on the political spectrum. Kossuth was the man in the middle. He was the man whose job it was to mediate between the radicals in the clubs and the more conservative delegates in the Assembly.42 But if the NRZ was mistaken in its estimation of Kossuth, it was certainly consistent in its political judgement based on the facts available to its editors. Conservative public opinion in Germany and Hungary made Kossuth the representative of the Hungarian Democracy and the editors of the NRZ responded by embracing him.
9. The Workers Have No Country
The emphasis placed by Marx and Engels on the national liberation movements of Germans, Poles and Magyars in the 1848 revolution has been especially confusing for both friends and foes, honest critics and dishonest ones. Why should internationalists care so passionately about these national struggles? Didn’t the Communist Manifesto itself state flat out that “the workers have no country”?
Well, actually, it didn’t. At least it didn’t in the original German edition. Part of the confusion stems from a mistranslation in the standard English version. The Manifesto actually said that the workers had no Vaterland. The resonance of that term in 1848 was not quite what it is today but it was close enough. It was not simply a narrow chauvinism that Marx and Engels rejected, however. In the Manifesto the question of nationalism, like other questions, is introduced by way of the refutation of a charge made against the communists by their opponents. The accusation in this instance is that the communists want to do away with the Vaterland and nationalities. The answer of the Manifesto is that the workers’ have no Vaterland because they do not have political power anywhere. The communists could not take from them what they did not have. In 1848 this was a pretty obvious statement of fact. The passage goes on to state that the proletariat in all the leading countries had “first of all to acquire political supremacy” it “must rise to be the leading class of the nation.” In short, the sense of this quote is almost the polar opposite of the one usually attributed to it.
The internationalism of the Manifesto lies in its assertion that the success of the coming revolution requires the victory of the working class in at least several of the leading European nations. A national victory was the first step in a European revolution. That first step could not be taken without taking into account the immediate issues facing specific national movements. It was just as obvious to Marx and Engels that a national movement that restricted itself to the first step was doomed to fail.
The Manifesto presents itself as the platform of an international revolutionary movement manifesting itself in different forms in different countries according to the different circumstances of each but still the same movement. The job of the communist vanguard is to emphasize the interdependence of the national movements and oppose the kind of national opportunism which ignores this interdependence.
The economic basis of this interdependence was most explicitly spelled out in one of Engels’ two preliminary attempts at a manifesto. The Principles of Communism43 was in the form of questions and answers which spelled out the basic principles of the communist “faith.” It was consciously modeled on the catechism which was the elementary educational-propaganda device in both the Catholic and Protestant churches. Question 11 was “What were the immediate results of the industrial revolution and the division of society into bourgeois and proletarians?” Engels answered that the first consequence was the creation of a world market. That meant that “a new machine invented in England [threw] millions of workers in China out of work within a year.” The political conclusion was that “if now in England or France the workers liberate themselves, this must lead to revolutions in all other countries, which sooner or later will also bring about the liberation of the workers in those countries.”44
The effect of the European revolution, in the view of the Manifesto would be to speed up the process already begun by the economic activity of the bourgeoisie. That process led to increasing
