Page:Karl Marx The Man and His Work.pdf/45

Rh a crown which made him king not by the grace of god, as he had so haughtily contended before the revolution, but by the grace of the people—a crown that was restored to Friedrich Wilhelm IV. in return for certain constitutional guarantees, guarantees which he subsequently as readily annulled as he had conceded them.

Under such turbulent conditions, it was impossible for Marx to stay in Paris. He, who had been so often accused of treasonable motives and proclaimed as a man without a country, he, the outcast, was drawn by an irresistible passion, a feverish longing, to the fatherland. Taking the given historic conditions as a criterion, he felt and knew that at home was the field upon which he could and would fight with the greatest and most telling force for the revolution in Europe. The ship of the German bourgeois revolution had followed in the wake of the Parisian uprising, and in this revolution the proletariat for the first time had affirmed its interests as a class, unfolding the banner of the Industrial Republic. And in Germany the bourgeoisie had only shattered the absolute monarchy with the massive fists of the proletariat. It was, therefore, easily conceivable, why in the beginning the bourgeoisie watched the rapid progress of the revolution with anxiety, and saw in this progress more an element of danger than victory. This growing class-consciousness of the working-class had sent a cold chill down the spine of the capitalists, and had greatly dampened the spirit of elation over the immediate victory. However, one thing was certain: If the revolution were to run its full course in Germany, i.e., if the revolution were to develop into a full-fledged bourgeois revolution, a revolution that would sweep away the last vestige of feudal prerogatives, then all the forces of the bourgeoisie would have to be enlisted in its cause and whipped on to a determined struggle. It was clear to Marx that this revolution could only be victorious, if it downed, together with the brutal forces of reaction, also the secret fears of the bourgeoisie for the proletariat. And in this peculiar creation of history, Marx saw the