Selected Essays | Page 6

demands of the German intellect and the responses of
German actuality now involve a similar cleavage of middle-class
society from the State, and from itself? Will theoretical needs merge
directly into practical needs? It is not enough that the ideas press
towards realization; reality itself must stimulate to thinking.
But Germany did not pass through the middle stages of political
emancipation simultaneously with the modern nations. Even the stages
which she has overcome theoretically she has not reached practically.
How would she be able to clear with a salto mortale not only her own
obstacles, but at the same time the obstacles of modern nations,
obstacles which she must actually feel to mean a liberation to be striven
for from her real obstacles? A radical revolution can only be the
revolution of radical needs, whose preliminary conditions appear to be
wholly lacking.
Although Germany has only accompanied the development of nations
with the abstract activity of thought, without taking an active part in the
real struggles incident to this development, she has, on the other hand,
shared in the suffering incident to this development, without sharing in
its enjoyments, or their partial satisfaction. Abstract activity on the one
side corresponds to abstract suffering on the other side.
Consequently, one fine day Germany will find herself at the level of
European decay, before she has ever stood at the level of European
emancipation. The phenomenon may be likened to a fetish-worshipper,
who succumbs to the diseases of Christianity.

Looking upon German governments, we find that, owing to
contemporary conditions, the situation of Germany, the standpoint of
German culture and finally their own lucky instincts, they are driven to
combine the civilized shortcomings of the modern State world, whose
advantages we do not possess, with the barbarous shortcomings of the
ancien régime, which we enjoy in full measure, so that Germany is
constantly obliged to participate, if not intelligently, at any rate
unintelligently, in the State formations which lie beyond her status quo.
Is there for example a country in the world which shares so naïvely in
all the illusions of the constitutional community, without sharing in its
realities, as does so-called constitutional Germany? Was it necessary to
combine German governmental interference, the tortures of the
censorship, with the tortures of the French September laws which
presupposed freedom of the press? Just as one found the gods of all
nations in the Roman pantheon, so will one find the flaws of all State
forms in the Holy Roman German Empire. That this eclecticism will
reach a point hitherto unsuspected is guaranteed in particular by the
politico-æsthetic gourmanderie of a German king, who thinks he can
play all the parts of monarchy, both of the feudal and the bureaucratic,
both of the absolute and the constitutional, of the autocratic as of the
democratic, if not in the person of his people, then in his own person, if
not for the people, then for himself. Germany as the embodiment of the
defect of the political present, constituted in her own world, will not be
able to overthrow the specifically German obstacles without
overthrowing the general obstacles of the political present.
It is not the radical revolution which is a utopian dream for Germany,
not the general human emancipation, but rather the partial, the merely
political revolution, the revolution which leaves the pillars of the house
standing. Upon what can a partial, a merely political revolution base
itself? Upon the fact that a part of bourgeois society could emancipate
itself and attain to general rulership, upon the fact that, by virtue of its
special situation, a particular class could undertake the general
emancipation of society. This class would liberate the whole of society,
but only upon the assumption that the whole of society found itself in
the situation of this class, and consequently possessed money and

education, for instance, or could acquire them if it liked.
No class in bourgeois society can play this part without setting up a
wave of enthusiasm in itself and among the masses, a wave of feeling
wherein it would fraternize and commingle with society in general, and
would feel and be recognized as society's general representative, a
wave of enthusiasm wherein its claims and rights would be in truth the
claims and rights of society itself, wherein it would really be the social
head and the social heart. Only in the name of the general rights of
society can a particular class vindicate for itself the general rulership.
Revolutionary energy and intellectual self-confidence are not sufficient
by themselves to enable a class to attain to this emancipatory position,
and thereby exploit politically all social spheres in the interest of its
own sphere. In order that the revolution of a people should coincide
with the emancipation of a special class of bourgeois