1848+: Last and First Men

Marx in Neue Rheinische Zeitung December 1848:

The Bourgeoisie and the Counter-Revolution
by Karl Marx
Neue Rheinische Zeitung No. 169
Translated by the Marx-Engels Institute
Transcribed for the Internet by director@marx.org, 1994
Cologne, December 11. When the March flood — a flood in miniature — subsided it left on the surface of Berlin no prodigies, no revolutionary giants, but traditional creatures, thickset bourgeois figures-the liberals of the United Provincial Diet, the representatives of the conscious Prussian bourgeoisie. The main contingents for the new ministries were supplied by the Rhineland and Silesia, the provinces with the most advanced bourgeoisie. They were followed by a whole train of Rhenish lawyers. As the bourgeoisie was pushed into the background by the feudal aristocracy, the Rhineland and Silesia were replaced in the cabinets by the old Prussian provinces. The only link of the Brandenburg cabinet with the Rhineland is through a single Elberfeld Tory. Hansemann and von der Heydt! These two names exemplify the whole difference between March and December 1848 for the Prussian bourgeoisie.

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