During the two revolutionary years of 1848-1849, the League proved itself in two ways: firstly, because its members intervened energetically in the movement everywhere; because in the press, on the barricades, and on the battlefields, they were always at the forefront of the ranks of the only resolutely revolutionary class, the proletariat. Secondly, the League proved itself because its conception of the movement, as set forth in the circulars of the congresses and of the Central Committee in 1847 and in the Communist Manifesto, proved to be the only correct one; because the expectations expressed in those documents have been completely fulfilled, and the conception of the present state of society, previously propagated by the League only in secret, is now on everyone's lips and is openly preached in the streets. At the same time, the previously solid organization of the League has slackened considerably. A large part of the League's members, who participated directly in the revolutionary movement, judged that the era of secret societies was over and that public action alone was sufficient. The circles and individual communities allowed their relations with the Central Committee to slacken and gradually suspended them. Thus, while the democratic party, the party of the petty bourgeoisie, was becoming increasingly organized in Germany, the workers' party was losing its only firm foothold, remaining organized at most only in a few places for local purposes, and thus entered the general movement completely under the domination of the petty-bourgeois democrats. This state of affairs must be brought to an end; the independence of the workers must be reestablished.

The Central Committee understood this necessity and therefore sent an emissary, Joseph Moll, to Germany in the winter of 1848-49 to reorganize the League. However, Moll's mission did not have lasting results, both because the German workers did not yet have sufficient experience at that time and because the uprising of last May interrupted it. Moll himself took up arms, joined the Baden-Palatinate army, and fell on June 29 in the battle of Murg. The League lost one of its oldest, most active, and most loyal members, who had actively participated in all the congresses and meetings of the Central Committee and had already completed a series of highly successful missions. After the defeat of the revolutionary parties in Germany and France, almost all the members of the Central Committee met in London in July 1849, were joined by new revolutionary forces, and pursued the reorganization of the League with renewed zeal.

The reorganization can only be carried out by an emissary, and the Central Committee considers it of the utmost importance that the emissary [Heinrich Bauer, ed.] should leave right now, as we are on the eve of a new revolution in which the workers' party must present itself as organized, as unanimous, and as independent as possible, if it does not want to be exploited and kept in tow by the bourgeoisie again, as in 1848.

Already in 1848, we told you, brothers, that the German liberal bourgeoisie would come to power as soon as possible and would immediately turn the newly conquered power against the workers. You have seen how this came to pass. It was in fact the bourgeoisie who, after the movement of March 1848, immediately seized State power and used it to push the workers, their allies in the struggle, back into their original position of subjugation. And although the bourgeoisie could not achieve this goal without allying itself with the feudal party, which had been defeated in March, indeed, although it could not achieve it without finally ceding power to this absolutist feudal party, it nevertheless secured conditions which, given the government's financial difficulties, would in the long run place power in its hands and guarantee all its interests, if it were possible for the revolutionary movement to transform itself now into a so-called peaceful evolution. The bourgeoisie would not even need to make itself hated by the people with violent measures to secure its rule, because all these measures have already been taken by the feudal counterrevolution. But the evolution will not take this peaceful course. On the contrary, the revolution that will hasten it is very near, whether it is provoked by an independent uprising of the French proletariat or by the invasion of revolutionary Babel by the Holy Alliance.

And the role that the German liberal bourgeoisie played in 1848 against the people, this role of such great traitors, will be assumed in the coming revolution by the democratic petty bourgeoisie, who now take the same position in the opposition that the liberal bourgeoisie had before 1848. This party, the democratic party, which is much more dangerous to the workers than the previous liberal party, consists of three elements:

I. The most progressive strata of the upper bourgeoisie, who set themselves the goal of immediately and completely overthrowing feudalism and absolutism. This faction is represented by the advocates of compromise and those who proposed not to pay taxes.

II. Constitutional-democratic petty bourgeois, whose main aim during the movement that has taken place so far has been the establishment of a more or less democratic federal State, as pursued by their representatives, by the left wing of the Frankfurt Assembly, and later by the Stuttgart parliament and by themselves in the campaign for the Constitution of the Empire.

III. Republican petty bourgeois, whose ideal is a German federal republic along the lines of Switzerland, and who now call themselves “democratic socialists” and “reds” because they cherish the pious desire to abolish the pressure of big capital on small capital, of the big bourgeoisie on the petty bourgeoisie. The representatives of this faction were the members of democratic congresses and committees, the leaders of democratic associations, and the editors of democratic newspapers.

All these factions now call themselves, after their defeat, “Republicans” or “Reds,” just as the petty bourgeois Republicans in France now call themselves Socialists. Wherever the opportunity still arises, as in Württemberg, Bavaria, etc., to pursue their aims by constitutional means, they seize the opportunity to maintain their old phraseology and to prove by their actions that they have not changed in the least. It is clear, on the other hand, that the change of name of this party does not in the least alter its position towards the workers, but simply proves that it must now turn against the bourgeoisie linked to absolutism and instead rely on the proletariat.

The petty-bourgeois democratic party is very strong in Germany; it not only embraces the vast majority of the bourgeois inhabitants of the cities, small industrial traders, and artisans; it also counts among its followers the peasants and the agricultural proletariat, insofar as the latter has not yet found support in the independent proletariat of the cities.

The position of the revolutionary workers' party towards petty-bourgeois democracy is as follows: it acts in agreement with the latter against the faction whose downfall it seeks; it opposes the petty-bourgeois democrats in all matters through which they seek to consolidate themselves on their own behalf.

The petty-bourgeois democrats, far from wanting to overthrow the whole of society for the revolutionary proletarians, tend toward a transformation of social conditions, so that the present society becomes as tolerable and comfortable for them as possible. Therefore, they demand, first of all, a reduction in State expenditure by limiting bureaucracy and shifting the burden of taxation onto large landowners and the big bourgeoisie. They also demand the elimination of the pressure of big capital on small capital, through public credit institutions and laws against usury, so that they and the peasants can receive advances on favorable terms from the State instead of from the capitalists; finally, they want the application of bourgeois property relations in the countryside, through the complete elimination of feudalism. In order to carry out all this, they need a democratic constitution of the State, whether constitutional or republican, which gives them and their allies, the peasants, a majority; and a democratic constitution of the municipalities which gives them direct control over municipal property and places in their hands a series of functions currently exercised by the bureaucracy.

According to them, the domination and rapid growth of capital must also be countered, in part by limiting the right of inheritance and in part by transferring as much work as possible to the State. As far as the workers are concerned, it is first of all established that they must remain wage earners as before; the democratic petty bourgeoisie only want workers to have better wages and a secure existence, and hope to achieve this through partial employment of workers by the State and through charitable measures; in short, they hope to corrupt the workers with more or less covert handouts and to break their revolutionary strength by making their situation temporarily bearable. The demands of petty-bourgeois democracy that we have summarized here are not advanced by all factions of it at the same time, and only very few people of petty-bourgeois democracy present them as a definite goal. The more advanced the groups and individuals of petty-bourgeois democracy are, the greater the number of these demands they make their own, and the few who see their own program in the above may even believe that they have thereby proposed the maximum that can be demanded of the revolution. But these demands can in no way suffice for the party of the proletariat. While the petty-bourgeois democrats want to bring the revolution to a conclusion as quickly as possible, and at most to realize the above demands, it is in our interest and our task to make the revolution permanent until all the more or less propertied classes are driven from power, until the proletariat has conquered State power, until the association of proletarians, not only in one country, but in all the dominant countries of the world, has developed to such an extent that competition between the proletarians of these countries ceases, and until at least the decisive productive forces are concentrated in the hands of the proletarians. For us, it cannot be a question of transforming private property, but of destroying it; not of mitigating class antagonisms, but of abolishing classes; not of improving the present society, but of founding a new society. There is no doubt that during the further development of the revolution, petty-bourgeois democracy will gain a preponderant influence in Germany for a certain time. The question therefore arises as to what the position of the proletariat, and especially of the League, will be in relation to it:
     1. as long as the present state of affairs lasts, in which the petty-bourgeois democrats are equally oppressed;
     2. in the coming revolutionary struggle, which will give them the upper hand;
     3. after this struggle, during the period of petty-bourgeois democracy's dominance over the defeated classes and the proletariat.

1) At the present moment, when petty-bourgeois democrats are oppressed everywhere, they preach unity and reconciliation to the proletariat in general; they offer them their hand and tend towards the formation of a large opposition party representing all shades of the democratic party, that is, they tend to involve the workers in a party organization dominated by generic social-democratic phrases behind which the specific interests of the petty bourgeoisie are hidden, and in which the specific demands of the proletariat, for the sake of peace, should not be put forward. Such a union would only benefit them and completely disadvantage the proletariat. The proletariat would completely lose its hard-won independent position and once again be reduced to being an appendage of official bourgeois democracy. This union must therefore be resolutely rejected. Instead of lowering themselves once again to serve as a cheering chorus for the bourgeois democrats, the workers and above all the League must strive to establish, alongside the official democrats, an independent, secret and public organization of the workers' party, and to make every community of the League the central point and core of workers' associations, in which the interests and position of the proletariat are discussed independently of bourgeois influences. How little the bourgeois democrats seriously consider an alliance in which the proletarians stand alongside them with equal power and equal rights is shown, for example, by the democrats of Breslau, who in their organ, the Neue Oder-Zeitung, furiously attack the independently organized workers, whom they call socialists. In the case of a battle against a common enemy, there is no need for any special union. As soon as this enemy has to be fought directly, the interests of the two parties coincide momentarily, and, as has been the case so far and will continue to be so in the future, this connection, calculated only for that moment, will re-establish itself spontaneously. It is natural that in the bloody conflicts that are imminent, as in all previous ones, it will be mainly up to the workers to win victory with their courage, their determination, and their self-sacrifice. As has been the case until now, in these struggles too, the petty bourgeoisie will, as long as possible, be slow, irresolute, and inactive, but once victory is won, it will try to claim it for itself, urge the workers to calm down and return home and to work, try to prevent so-called excesses, and exclude the proletariat from the fruits of victory. It is not in the power of the workers to prevent the petty-bourgeois democrats from acting in this way, but it is in their power to make it more difficult for them to turn against the armed proletariat; it is in their power to dictate conditions such that the rule of the bourgeois democrats carries within itself from the outset the germ of its own dissolution, and thus makes it easier to supplant it later with the rule of the proletariat. First of all, the workers must, during the conflict and immediately after the struggle, as long as possible, oppose the attempts of the bourgeoisie to maintain calm, and force the democrats to put their current terrorist rhetoric into action. They must strive to ensure that the immediate revolutionary excitement is not stifled again immediately after victory. On the contrary, they must strive to keep it alive as long as possible. Far from opposing so-called excesses, cases of popular revenge on hated persons or on public buildings connected with nothing but hateful memories, not only must such examples be tolerated, but their direction must be taken over. During and after the struggle, the workers must present their own demands at every opportunity, alongside the demands of the bourgeois democrats. They must demand guarantees for the workers as soon as the bourgeois democrats prepare to take the government into their own hands. If necessary, they must force the others to give them these guarantees, and above all ensure that the new rulers commit themselves to all possible concessions and promises, which is the surest way to compromise them. Above all, they must curb as much as possible the intoxication of victory and the enthusiasm for the new order of things that follows every successful insurrection, interpreting the situation coolly and calmly and showing open distrust of the new government. Alongside the new official governments, they must at the same time establish their own revolutionary workers' governments, either in the form of municipal councils and committees or through workers' circles and committees, so that the bourgeois democratic governments not only immediately lose the support of the workers, but also find themselves from the outset watched and threatened by organizations behind which stands the entire mass of workers. In a word: from the first moment of victory, mistrust must no longer be directed against the defeated reactionary party, but against yesterday's allies, against the party that wants to exploit the common victory on its own.

2) But in order to be able to oppose this party, whose betrayal of the workers will begin with the first hour of victory, energetically and menacingly, the workers must be armed and organized. The arming of the entire proletariat with rifles, shotguns, pistols, and ammunition must be carried out immediately; the reestablishment of the old civil guard directed against the workers must be opposed immediately. But where this latter goal cannot be achieved, the workers must try to organize themselves independently into a proletarian guard, with a leader and staff elected by them, and place themselves under the orders not of the State powers, but of the municipal councils formed by the workers. Where workers are employed by the State, they must arm and organize themselves into a special corps, with leaders chosen by them, or as part of the proletarian guard. Under no pretext should weapons and ammunition be surrendered, and any attempt at disarmament must be opposed by force if necessary. Destruction of the influence of the bourgeois democrats over the workers, immediate independent and armed organization of the workers, and assurance of conditions that make the momentary and inevitable domination of bourgeois democracy as difficult and compromising as possible; these are the main points that the proletariat and the League must keep in mind during and after the imminent insurrection.

3) As soon as the new governments have consolidated themselves to some extent, their struggle against the workers will begin immediately. In order to be able to effectively oppose the petty-bourgeois democrats, it is first of all necessary for the workers to be organized and centralized independently, in circles. As soon as possible after the overthrow of the present governments, the Central Committee of the League will move to Germany, immediately convene a congress, and make the necessary proposals to centralize the workers' circles under a single leadership, established at the movement's headquarters. The rapid organization of at least a provincial connection between the workers' circles is one of the most important points for strengthening and developing the workers' party. The first consequence of the overthrow of the current governments will be the election of a National Assembly. In this regard, the proletariat must ensure:

I. That no local authorities or government commissioners use any technicalities to exclude a certain number of workers under any pretext.

II. That everywhere, alongside the bourgeois democratic candidates, there are workers' candidates, who should as far as possible be chosen from among the members of the League and for whose election every effort must be made. Even where there is no hope of success, the workers must present their candidates in order to safeguard their independence, to gauge their strength, and to publicly manifest their revolutionary position and the party's point of view. In this, they must not be seduced by the platitudes of the democrats who, for example, claim that doing so divides the democratic party and gives the reactionaries a chance of victory. All these phrases boil down to one thing: that the proletariat will be cheated. The progress that the proletarian party will make by maintaining such an independent course is infinitely more important than the disadvantage that the presence of a few reactionaries among the elected representatives might produce. If democracy fights reaction from the outset with determination and measures of terror, the influence of the latter in the elections will be destroyed from the outset.

The first point on which the bourgeois democrats will come into conflict with the workers will be the abolition of feudalism. As in the first French Revolution, the petty bourgeoisie will want to give the feudal lands to the peasants as free property, that is, they will want to allow the agricultural proletariat to continue to exist and create a class of petty-bourgeois peasants who will have to go through the same cycle of impoverishment and indebtedness in which the French peasant is still caught today.

The workers, in the interests of the agricultural proletariat and in their own interests, must oppose this plan. They must demand that the confiscated feudal property remain the property of the State and be transformed into workers' colonies, cultivated by the associated agricultural proletariat, with all the advantages of large-scale agriculture, so that the principle of common ownership immediately receives a strong foundation amid the faltering relations of bourgeois property. Just as the democrats ally themselves with the peasants, so the workers must ally themselves with the agricultural proletariat. Furthermore, the democrats will work directly for a federal republic or, at least, if they cannot avoid a single and indivisible republic, they will try to paralyze the central government with every possible independence and autonomy of the municipalities and provinces. The workers must oppose this plan and work not only for a single, indivisible German republic, but also, within it, for a very decisive centralization of power in the hands of the State. They must not be deceived by democratic talk about the freedom of the municipalities, local self-government, and so on. In a country like Germany, where so many remnants of the Middle Ages still need to be eliminated and so many local and provincial particularisms need to be broken down, it must not be tolerated in any way that every village, every city, every province should place a new obstacle in the way of revolutionary activity, which can only spread in all its strength from the center. We must not tolerate a renewal of the current state of affairs in which Germans must fight separately, in each city and each province, to achieve a single, always the same, progress. And even less can it be tolerated that a form of property that is even more backward than modern private property and is necessarily dissolving everywhere into the latter – common property – and the conflicts that arise from this between rich and poor communes, as well as municipal public law, existing alongside State public law, should be perpetuated through a so-called free constitution of the communes, with its quibbles against the workers. As in France in 1793, the implementation of the strictest centralization^(*) of power is today the task of the truly revolutionary party in Germany.

We have seen how the democrats will come to power in the next revolutionary movement, how they will be forced to propose more or less socialist measures. Now the question will be asked: what measures will the workers propose in turn? Of course, at the beginning of the movement, the workers will not yet be able to propose directly communist measures. But they can:

1. Force the democrats to intervene in as many areas as possible in the current social order, to disrupt its regular course, to compromise themselves, as well as to concentrate in the hands of the State as many productive forces, means of transport, factories, railways, etc. as possible.

2. They must push to the extreme the measures proposed by the democrats, who in any case will not present themselves as revolutionaries, but only as reformers, and transform them into direct attacks on private property. Thus, for example, when the petty bourgeoisie proposes to purchase the railways and factories, the workers must demand that these railways and factories be confiscated by the State purely and simply, without compensation, as the property of reactionaries. If the Democrats propose proportional taxation, the workers will propose progressive taxation; if the Democrats themselves propose a moderate progressive tax, the workers will insist on a tax so rapidly progressive that big capital will be ruined; if the Democrats demand that the State's debts be settled, the proletarians will demand that the State go bankrupt. The demands of the workers must always be adjusted to the concessions and measures of the Democrats.

Although the German workers cannot come to power and satisfy their class interests without going through a long revolutionary development, they are at least aware this time that the first act of the impending revolutionary drama will coincide with the direct victory of their class in France, and therefore the process will be hastened.

But they themselves must do what is essential for their final victory by clarifying their own class interests, assuming an independent party position as soon as possible, and not allowing the hypocritical phrases of the petty-bourgeois democrats to distract them even for a moment from the independent organization of the proletarian party. Their battle cry must be: The Permanent Revolution.