Final Section of Chapter Four of the Pamphlet The Role of Force in History

Author(s) Frederick Engels
Written December 1887


Written between late December 1887 and March 1888
First published in Die Neue Zeit, Vol. 1, No. 26, 1895-96
Printed according to the manuscript
Published in English for the first time in MECW vol. 26
Collection(s): Die Neue Zeit


🔍 See also : The Role of Force in History.
I. 3 classes: two lousy, one of them decaying, the other on the ascent, and workers who only want bourgeois FAIR PLAY. Manoeuvring between the latter two therefore the only proper way–perish the thought! Policy: To strengthen state power in general and to make it financially independent in particular (nationalisation of the railways, monopolies), police state and regional principles of justice.

"Liberal" and "National", the dual nature of 1848, still in evidence in Germany of 1870-88.

Bismarck had to rely on the Reichstag and the people, and this called for complete freedom of the press, speech, association and assembly, just for orientation.

II. 1. Structure [of the Empire] a) Economic—ill-conceived currency law main achievement already,
b) Political—restoration of the police state, and anti-bourgeois judicial laws (1876), poor copy of the French version.— Legal uncertainty.—Culminated in the Imperial Court. 1879.
2. Lack of ideas proved by playing around and slandering Bismarck. Bismarck's party sans phrase. a) Kulturkampf. The Catholic priest is no gendarme or policeman. Jubilation by the bour geoisie—hopelessness—going to Canossa.[1] Only rational result civil marriage!
3. Swindles and crash. His involvement. Wretchedness of conservative Junkers, who are just as dishonourable as the bourgeoisie.
4. [Bismarck's] complete transformation into a Junker. a) Protective tariffs, etc., coalition of bourgeois and Junkers, with the latter taking the lion's share.

b) Attempts at a tobacco monopoly defeated in 1882.

5. Social policy a la Bonaparte. a) Anti-Socialist Law and crushing of workers' associations and funds.

b) Social reform crap.

III. 6. Foreign policy. Threat of war, effect of annexation. Increase in strength of army. Septennate.[2] In due course, a return to the pre-1870 year group to maintain superiority for a few more years.
IV. Result: a) A domestic situation which collapses with the death of those two[3] : no empire without emperor! Proletariat driven to revolution; an unprecedented growth in social-democracy on the repeal of the Anti-Socialist Law—chaos,

b) Overall outcome—a peace worse than war at best; or else a world war.

  1. ↑ The expression "to go to Canossa" dates back to the humiliating pilgrimage to the Canossa Castle in Northern Italy undertaken by the German Emperor Henry IV in 1077 for the purpose of persuading Pope Gregory VII to revoke his excommunication. It became a current phrase after Bismarck said in the Reichstag in May 1872: "We shall not go to Canossa." In the late 1870s, needing the support of the Catholic Party of the Centre, because his old stronghold, the National Liberal Party (see Note 170) was losing its influence, Bismarck repealed nearly all anti-Catholic laws passed during the Kulturkampf (see Note 351) and forced the principal adherents of the anti-Catholic policy to retire. By using the expression "going to Canossa", Engels ironically alludes to Bismarck's concessions to the clerical circles in 1878-87, which in fact amounted to giving up the Kulturkampf
  2. ↑ Septennate (a seven-year period)—the German law on army credits, fixed for seven years ahead. It also approved an increase in the numerical strength of the standing army in peacetime (401,000) for the same term.
  3. ↑ Bismarck and William I.— Ed.