In this, the tenth letter, Liebknecht relates the conditions of workers in Saxony and Silesia, describes Bismark’s authoritarianism, and analyzes the recent French elections.

‘Letter from Leipzig, X’ by Wilhelm Liebknecht from Workingman’s Advocate (Chicago). Vol. 7 No. 33. April 15, 1871.

Leipzig, February 26, 1871

To the Editor of the WORKINGMAN’S ADVOCATE:

It is common for our German middle class, if you talk to them about the misery of our working classes, and the necessity of helping them, to answer you: “What you say, may be very well for England or France, but it does not apply to Germany; the German workmen as a body are neither in a bad condition nor dissatisfied with their lot; exceptional cases, if the chronic famine and starvation of the Silesian weavers are not to be counted–exceptions proverbially proving the rule, and the rule is: prosperity and happiness. Nobody would talk of socialism and a social question in Germany, if such unsound ideas had not been imported from England and France by a parcel of discontented fellows, whom no government and no state of society will please, and whose mainsprings of action are selfishness and ambition.” If you reply, that the grievances of the German working classes are admitted to be real even by conservative politicians and by clergymen, then the retort is: “These conservative politicians and clergy- men are not in earnest, they only wish to use the social question as a lever against the middle class.” And this is true enough. However, the motives of these gentlemen (of whom more by-and-by) do not affect the truth of their statements with regard to the condition of the German working classes.

By some lucky accident I happened to discover some time ago a little Treatise or rather memorial, printed in few copies only and not destined for publicity, written neither by a demagogue nor by a conservative hater of the bourgeoisie, but by a man who stands aloof from party strife, who has, as far as I can make out, no political principles whatever, certainly none, which could bias his judgment, who is untainted by the slightest vestige of socialistic poison, and who has been driven to speak solely by the awful amount of misery he got acquainted with in the course of his professional experience in one of the chief centers of German industry. The Treatise (on the influence of some branches of industry on the sanitary condition) has been published five years ago, in the spring of 1866, and is dedicated to the Saxonian Ministry of the Interior. The author, Dr. Michaelis, a physician, was living then¹ and had been living for a long time at Oelsnitz, a small town in the heart of the Erzgebirges (ore mountains in Saxony, and stretching into Bohemia and Bavaria), amidst a teeming population of weavers, miners, stocking weavers and lace and fringemakers. Here, in the most thickly populated part of Germany, to which in point of industrial importance only Rhenish Prussia can be compared, a large portion of those wares is produced, that enable German industry successfully to compete with English industry in many markets of the world. Immense wealth is created there, and the national riches “augmented” with dazzling velocity–and the creators of this wealth, the augmentors of our national riches? Starving–their life slow, hunger-death–slow dying of hunger! Thus tells us honest, impartial Dr. Michaelis. The men stunted, weak, the women sickly, the children growing up into men still more stunted and weak, into women still more sickly, unless they die before they are grown up. And that the majority do. “The average length of life, children from the day of their birth included, is amongst weavers twelve years and three months.” Twelve years and three months! To understand the terrible meaning the crushing weight of these numbers, it must be borne in mind that the average number for the whole of northern Germany, with Saxony is (25) twenty-five years. So that a Saxonian weaver’s child enters life with but half a lease of the common average life! Or in other words, enters life with the certainty that its life thread will be out before the middle is reached! Killed halfway on the road to natural death! Natural, of course, in a relative sense, corresponding to our present state of civilization. For the other branches of industry the average length of life is larger by about one year-between thirteen and fourteen–so that here the killing process is not finished but just beyond half-way!

This will be sufficient for today. I shall have occasion to recur to Dr. Michaelis’ Treatise and shall then translate some of the most striking passages, which will show the American workingmen how their German brethren live–and die!

And in Silesia things are much worse still! And Saxony is the best governed part of Germany. Let us turn to some different subject. A very funny spectacle is now given us by the hirelings of the Prussian press bureau. The fact of foreign interference in the peace negotiations contrasts so cruelly with their big talks during the last five or six months, that, as a matter of course, the ugly truth cannot be admitted. On the other hand the fact has been proclaimed, as plain as is possible in official language, by the English government, and so the poor press bureau scribes are squeezed in between this official intimation and their own bragging as between two millstones, and they wriggle about in despair blurting out the most discrepant and incoherent communiqués. All rumours concerning neutral meditation are totally unfounded. It is true England has attempted some sort of meditation, of course in vain. It is said that rumors. concerning etc., are not wholly without foundation. And so on. It is a good thing for these press hirelings that the new Austrian ministry offers such an excellent opportunity of diverting public attention, and of raising a thick cloud of dust behind which they can hide their discomfiture. Unfortunately for them, or rather their paymasters, this new ministry stands in close relationship to the question of foreign interference, and I even think it has been called into life by the Austrian Chancellor. Count Beust has, during his whole life been hostile to Prussia, and since Count Bismarck is at the head of Prussia, the man of iron and blood² has amongst the statesmen opposing him had but one antagonist who proved a match for him, and that one Count Beust. Before the war of 1866 Beust was the only official person in Germany who understood Bismarck’s game and did all in his power to spoil it. But as Saxonian minister which he was then, with the resources of a tiny fifth-rate state (Saxony has less than two and half millions of inhabitants) at his disposal–what could he do? The other German ministers laughed at his suspicions, and the Emperor of Austria, whom he in vain tried to shake out of his dreamed security, who was so completely blinded and spellbound that he said to a member of his cabinet at the end of April: There is no real danger; I know Bismarck would like to make war upon us; he wanted to turn us out of Germany, but the King of Prussia is an honest man, and will never consent to an attack upon his German Allies. And of the folly of this confidence he was not to be convinced. A few weeks later the darkest warnings were fulfilled, and Austria, taken by surprise, attacked in the south by Italy–at the instigation of Prussia; menaced in the east by a revolution in Romania–the joint work of Prussia and Russia; Hungary and Bohemia, that is more than half the Empire deeply furrowed by Prussian emissaries and the people on the brink of insurrection. So Austria was helpless at the mercy of her scheming, crafty antagonist, and had to submit. The Emperor in his remark, quoted above, had forgotten that it would be possible for Bismarck to persuade King William that he was the party attacked, instead of the party attacking. But at Vienna they bethought themselves how the little Saxonian diplomatist, who had foreseen and foretold the catastrophe, and, the King of Saxony having been forced by Bismarck to dismiss his too sharpsighted minister, Herr Von Beust, (not yet a count) was invited to Austria and offered the chancellorship with carte blanche, an offer which he accepted. His program was, and I doubt not is still: Revenge for Sadowa–moral or physical, never mind, but revenge. For the last four years he has labored hard, successful in many things, unsuccessful in more. He has done clever things, and he has committed great blunders, the two greatest blunders being his silly attempt at gaining the friendship of Russia in 1867 and his acquiescence in the shameful persecutions of the Austrian social democrats. Bitter experience must have shown him, what Russian friendship means; insurrection in Dalmatia, uninterrupted subterraneous miningwork in all Slavonian provinces, fomentation of discord and discontent everywhere. And as for that crusade against the working-class movement he must, in his isolation and weakness during the Prusso-French War, have found out that it was one of those blunders for which Talleyrand’s celebrated word was intended: a blunder is worse than a crime–though a crime too, in the sharpest sense of the expression. Had he opposed the brutal measures of Mr. Giskra, the narrowminded bourgeois, the Austrian government would not have lost the sympathies of the people and would not have become a reed driven hither and thither by the wind of contending factions and intrigues.

Well he has now tried to redress this blunder-crime somewhat, by restoring the prisoners to liberty. I say, he has; for in spite of what the newspapers assert to the contrary, it can hardly be doubted that the new ministry has been formed with his consent, even by his instrumentality. If the line of policy, indicated by this act of atonement, is consistently pursued, if Count Beust shuns the crooked ways of diplomacy of which he is so fond, and walks the straight, open way, pointed out by self-preservation, if he learns the wisdom of honesty and courage, and the folly of scheming and time-serving–he has a splendid chance against his old enemy. And this old enemy has his misgivings. serious ones, as we can guess from the ill-tempered, perplexed articles of the Berlin Press Bureau. I wish they were founded–but I have my misgivings too, and they run in quite another direction. Count Beust is approaching his sixtieth-year, and I have never yet heard of a man who at that age could change his character and exhibit qualities not manifested before. And openness and courage are perhaps the two qualities least likely to be hidden and dormant in a man for three score of years. But come what may, our Austrian friends are free, and the Austrian people will one day play a role on the European stage, whether its government be good or bad.

Our elections are to take place in twelve days, and the public indifference is not diminishing. But I only wanted to tell you a little anecdote. You will recollect that nearly half of Prussia is under martial law, which does not harmonize exactly with the constitutional liberty of elections. This was also the opinion of a member of the Prussian chamber, who made an “interpellation to government, and got the answer.” Martial law could not be raised, but government would grant full liberty during the elections. The Prussian deputies were satisfied, and those that hold meetings and speak freely will not be put in prison–until the elections are over. Martial law and liberty: how do Bismarck’s transatlantic admirers like this pretty formula, so expressive of the spirit of this new-fangled “German empire?”

The result of the French elections has filled the reactionists with hopes and many democrats with fears, that the Republic will be soon changed into a monarchy of some kind or other. These hopes and fears appear to me utterly unfounded, taking their origin in an incorrect view of the state of things. In the first place we must bear in mind, that the question which the National Assembly is destined to solve, has nothing whatever to do with the future government of France, and is simply: Can we accept the conditions of peace to be offered by Prussia, or have we to continue the war? The settlement of the internal affairs is to be left to a new assembly, which will be elected after the restoration of peace. Till then a provisional government either the existing or another one, will hold the power. Under such circumstances it is not fair to classify the representatives elected as Monarchists or Republicans, the question Monarchy or Republic? not having been at issue, when they were elected; but they are to be classified as advocates of peace, or as advocates of war. If the former are in the majority this only proves that the majority of the French people do not think it advisable to continue the war now; and if this majority of the elected mostly consists of men who still adhere to one of the three dynasties driven from France, this only proves that the Republicans, who were the soul of the war since Sedan, have got identified with the idea of war, and are not considered by the majority of the people to be in favor of peace. Regarded in this light–and in my opinion it ought not to be regarded in any other–the vote of the French people was a vote for peace, and for nothing else. Had the question at issue really been: Monarchy or Republic, the result of the election would, no doubt, have been a different one, and many a Monarchist, who was simply chosen for his peaceful tendencies, would have been rejected because of his monarchical principles.

However, the existence of a monarchical majority in the first representative assembly of the new French Republic is an event, the importance of which to under-rate would be foolish indeed. We must take things as they are, not as we wish them to be. Wish is a very bad father of thought. Fathers of illusions–the proverb should run. And a dangerous illusion it would be, to believe that this majority was essentially a fictitious one, the effect of causes which misled the current of public feeling! To some extent this is true–there was not time for France to collect herself, one-third of the country had to vote in the shade of foreign bayonets, and, as I explained just now, the question of the future government had nothing at all to do with these elections–yet this monarchistic majority is not an accident, not a mere whim of the people–it is the natural, and on the whole, the necessary produce of the political circumstances and the political development and education of France. Let us look back at the Plebiscite of May last: above seven millions (7,100,000) gave a vote of confidence to the empire; one and one-half million (1,522,000) voted against the empire, and three millions abstained. If we add one million of the abstainers to the enemies of the empire, we have still an immense majority in favor of the empire, and if we make the amplest allowance for cheating, trickery, corrupt influences and practices, etc., we do still not get rid of that majority. Facts are stubborn things, and the fact is: the immense majority of French peasants, who form three-fourths of the total population, were up to the war for Louis Bonaparte, the nephew (at least according to respectable history, and according to the Code Napoleon, which discretely “forbids researches into the paternity of children born in wedlock”), the fancied nephew of their fancied benefactor, the great emperor.³ The peasants, as a class, are conservative everywhere; nowhere more so than in France. The gradual deterioration of their social condition, the economical ruin, which in the shape of mortgages and usurous loan advances has overtaken one half of them already⁴ and is threatening the other half-lies heavy on the mind of the French peasants, and having been promised help by every government since 1830, and having been deceived shamefully by every government since 1830 they have become extremely suspicious and averse to political change which to them means but fresh disappointments. Certainly in this, their hopeless economical position, there is also contained the germ of an irresistible socialistic movement, but the germ is not yet developed, and the peasants still cling like drowning men, to the straw of momentary relief from day to day, from hand to mouth. That these peasants, who six months ago firmly believed in the empire, which they had raised and upheld, should in such short time have been converted into Republicans, nobody could reasonably expect. The utmost that could be expected was, that grown wise by the experiences of the war, they would withdraw their support from the empire; and this expectation has been fulfilled. Only a handful of Bonapartists are elected, and half of them in towns so that Bonapartism in France may be declared dead. And Bonapartism or Caesarism, that is, monarchy hiding the sword of despotism behind some democratic shams, was the last form under which monarchy could exist in France. Neither the Orleanists nor the Legitimists have strength enough to overthrow the Republic. Though for the present, united with the Bonapartists they may have the majority in this and the next assembly, yet each of these parties is separately far less numerous than the Republicans, and these three atomistic and hating one another as much as they all hate the Republicans. Monarchist monarchies are altogether no match for one close Republican minority, which is more numerous than each of them singly⁵ and being supported by the most active and energetic class, stronger than the three together.

NOTES

1. I am told he has gone to Dresden since.

2. Bismarck, when he became minister, hinted once: the difficulties of the government were to be cured with blood and iron–a kind of physic, the lavish and successful (for him and his kind) employment of which had made him a great statesman since.

3. The revolution of 1789 emancipated the French peasants and made them free proprietors of the soil they had till then tilled for the nobility and clergy. The laws of Main morte and Primogéniture were abolished at the same time, and it was ordained that the property in land, like other property had to be divided (parcelled–hence the name of parcelles, the parcelled pieces of land) in equal parts amongst the children. This law was afterwards maintained by Napoleon, and he had the impudence of representing himself as its originator–a lie which was believed by the peasants and on which lie the second empire was founded–in very truth the empire of lies!

4. According to the census of 1851 the sums lent to peasants on mortgages amounted to 10,000,000,000, ten thousand millions of francs! Since then the amount must have nearly doubled; increased so frightfully in fact, that the government did not dare to publish it! Ten years later 3,600,000 peasants out of 7,840,000, that is nearly one-half were unable to pay their personal taxes. And what may be the number now?

5. The statement in some telegrams that 400 Orleanists were elected and that consequently the Orleanist party had an absolute majority is an obvious falsehood-a pious fraud, betraying the secret wishes of the manufacturers of the said telegrams-all telegraphic offices of Germany (Wolff’s foremost) being influenced and guided by the Berlin Press bureau and its present branch- bureau at Versailles. I beg the reader to mark this fact. Not 200 Orleanists are elected–the other half enumerated as such are “either blue republicans” or “liberals” without any particular party-shade, men who swim with the tide and will never work against the republic, nor it is true, fight for it either. But that will be done by others, if wanted. There is no lack of such.

The Chicago Workingman’s Advocate in 1864 by the Chicago Typographical Union during a strike against the Chicago Times. An essential publication in the history of the U.S. workers’ movement, the Advocate though editor Andrew Cameron became the voice National Labor Union after the Civil War. It’s pages were often the first place the work of Marx, Engels, and the International were printed in English in the U.S. It lasted through 1874 with the demise of the N.L.U.

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