The Cologne Communist Trial

A friend's Amazon review of The Cologne Communist Trial.

Some of this book is extremely important; ‘Heroes of the Exile’ is not, but it gives a sarcastic, humorous view of the pretensions of some of the exiles of the German 1848 Revolution. Personally, I didn’t finish it, being slightly familiar with only a few of the people discussed.

The most important thing in the book is Engels’ “On the History of the Communist league,” updated for 1885 publication. I enjoyed Raoul Peck’s ‘The Young Karl Marx,’ which he says is based on letters. But I think Marx and Engels are shown in the movie as rather arrogant well-educated young men who used their knowledge and a bit of ruthlessness to take over a workers’ party. The view Engels presents is dramatically different. Engels got to know the League of the Just, as the pre-Marxist communist group was called while researching The Condition of the Working Class in England (Oxford World's Classics). He, and then Marx were early on asked to join, but although they had a keen interest in the group and its militant members, they refused to join so long as the group was based on unscientific ideas. Once their ideas caught on, they joined, and were asked to draft what became The Communist Manifesto in 1847. The next year, revolution broke out in France, Germany (including Austria), Italy, and elsewhere. The thrust of the revolution was bourgeois-democratic, and the Communists formed the extreme far left of the democratic movement. For why the German Revolution failed (mostly the cowardice of the liberal bourgeoisie and its fear of the working class) see Revolution and Counter-Revolution, or Germany in 1848 (Classic Reprint).

As is explained in the Communist Manifesto, the situation at the time was that the bourgeoisie still had a progressive role to play in parts of the world. While they didn’t live up to this in Germany, they did a lot better in the US, in the Second American Revolution, during which Marx and Engels were active partisans of the Union Army (see The Civil War in the United States). But they failed to carry through Radical Reconstruction (see Racism, Revolution, Reaction, 1861-1877: The Rise and Fall of Radical Reconstruction).

‘The Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial’ was written in 1852, in defense of members of the Communist League who had a propaganda group that due to Prussian law had to function underground. They were charged with (what else?) conspiring to overthrow the government. Marx writes in an 1875 postscript: “The work saw the light of day only a few weeks after the end of the trial [actually some of it appeared in newspapers while the trial was going on]. At that time the most pressing need was to make the facts known quickly and so errors of detail were unavoidable.” The errors were not significant, and it's a humorous primer on how the political police operate.

Marx felt bad that he had gone so hard on the Willich-Schapper group that the Communist League had expelled because of their continuous scheming plots in a period when revolution was not on the agenda. But the prosecution was continuously trying to tie them together, which made things difficult.

As Marx points out, “[August] Willich has shown in the American Civil War that he is something more than a visionary” becoming a Union Army brigadier general. And Karl Schapper redeemed himself as a “lifelong champion of the of the workers movement.”

Some of the people put on trial became quite important as well. Dr. Abraham Jacobi (in the book spelled Jacoby) after being acquitted, took his communist views to the United States, but is better known as the founder of American pediatrics.

Wilhelm Liebknecht, convicted in the farce of a trial, became a prominent leader of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), and his son Karl, after the SPD betrayed the working class by supporting Germany in World War I, was a key founder of the new Communist Party of Germany, and one of its first martyrs.

If ‘Heroes of the Exile’ is non-essential reading, the appendices are quite important; mostly writings and speeches by Marx. Unfortunately, they were printed in a tiny font size.

For the German Marxists’ role in US politics, see Revolutionary Continuity: the Early Years, 1848-1917. For understanding the role of the political police in the United States I recommend FBI on Trial: The Victory in the Socialist Workers Party Suit Against Government Spying. And for how communists defend their views in bourgeois courts, see Socialism on Trial: Testimony at Minneapolis Sedition Trial.