[Rezension:] Karl Marx, Die Klassenkämpfe in Frankreich 1848/1850

Emil Lederer: Review of Karl Marx, Die Klassenkämpfe in Frankreich 1848/1850 (1912)

Lederer’s brief review focuses on the second edition’s sole new element, August Bebel’s preface. It moves from Bebel’s electoral expectations, grounded in economic changes in Germany since 1895, to the social conditions limiting those expectations. Bebel envisages elections that could force the ruling classes onto new paths, but Lederer emphasizes the qualification:

Allerdings hält auch er hiefür es für notwendig (so wie s. Zt. auch Engels), daß in den kleinbäuerlichen und kleinbürgerlichen Schichten ein weitgehender Stimmungs- und Gesinnungswechsel eintritt.

English translation: To be sure, he too holds it necessary for this (as Engels did in his time) that a far-reaching change of mood and disposition should occur in the small-peasant and petty-bourgeois strata.

The comparison with Engels makes changes in small-peasant and petty-bourgeois political attitudes central to the prospect of transformation. Lederer closes by drawing out the implication for working-class numerical growth:

Die numerische Entwicklung der Arbeiterschaft allein scheint also auch nach Bebel nicht rasch genug zu sein, um allein eine völlige Umwälzung in der nächsten Zukunft herbeiführen zu können.

English translation: The numerical development of the working class alone thus appears, even according to Bebel, not to be rapid enough to be able by itself to bring about a complete upheaval in the immediate future.

The review’s significance lies in this distinction between demographic expansion and political capacity: near-term upheaval depends on shifting allegiances beyond the working class, not simply its increasing size.