Page:Karl Kautsky - Frederick Engels - 1899.djvu/13

 out; that this freedom did not bring social peace, but only a new social struggle.

The opinion frequently prevails that the revolution of 1848 was wrecked without results. What in reality did suffer shipwreck were the illusions which the existing struggle between the main contending parties concealed, and which made the people believe that laborers, manufacturers and artisans were brothers with common interests and a common goal. In reality they were only united in their struggle against the existing absolutism. The revolution revealed the opposition between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, and at the same time showed the political incompetency of the small property owners.

These latter were the soul of the movement of 1848 and its failure meant only the defeat of that class. The year 1848 marks their political bankruptcy. Everywhere the proletariat went into the fight for them; everywhere they were finally betrayed.

The laboring class was at that time too young, too immature and too much split up to construct a policy on its own responsibility. Wherever they sought to do this they failed.

The plans of the bourgeoisie in no way miscarried in this revolution. The reaction was successful in accomplishing most of its purposes. The proletariat (on the continent) learned, through this revolution, its friends and foes. It recognized, on the one hand, its opposition to the bourgeoisie; on the other, the treachery of the small property owners. It learned for the first time to know itself—it gained a class-consciousness, a self-consciousness. This development of a conscious fighting class dates in Germany from the February revolution.

The only class that lost economically, politically and morally in every relation was the small property owners. This class in reality went to pieces with the overthrow of the revolution.

All this is quite clear to-day, a generation after the struggle. In the year 1848 the "Neue Rheinische Zeitung" was the sole paper, and the men of the "Neue Rheinische Zeitung" were the only individuals who clearly recognized this. These made it their task, not to nourish the illusions of the masses with hollow phrases, but, on the contrary, to destroy them with merciless criticism. Not that they showed themselves to be either cowardly or obstructionists. On the contrary no paper urged on more energetically to decisive and quick