When their first fury is abated and they see new machinery taking the place of that which they have destroyed, and new factories built on the foundations of those they have burned, they see the impotence of their actions. In England a new movement begins. They try to re-enact the Elizabethan statute of laborers, to bring back the days of handicrafts, of journeyman and apprentice. They soon learned that the old era had vanished, never to return. The workingman possessed neither the power nor the ingenuity to bring it back. He turned, next, to possess himself of the machinery of the state.
Political conditions paved the way. France, after her orgy, had fallen back into absolutism. Germany and Austria had remained feudal in the most distasteful sense of the word; the nobility retained their ancient privileges and forsook their ancient duties. The landlord class even retained jurisdiction over their tenants. The old industry had been destroyed by Napoleon's campaigns; the new machine industry did not establish itself until after the enactment of protective tariffs and the creation "Zollverein," in 1818. This cemented the bourgeois interests. Manufacturers, traders, and bankers achieved a homogeneity of interest and ambition which was antagonistic to the spirit of the _junker_ and the feudalist. The new bourgeoisie wanted laws favorable to trade expansion. They needed the law-making machinery to achieve this. By 1840 the upper middle class had become feverish for political power. They imbibed the doctrines of the literature of that period which preached a constitutional republicanism. Hegel gave the weighty sanction of philosophy to the overthrow of absolute monarchy.
The great mass of the people were, of course, workingmen, small traders, and shopkeepers, and the rural peasantry. The small trader was dependent upon the favors of the ruling class on the one hand, and of the banker and manufacturer on the other hand. When the interests of these two clashed he was alarmed, for he could neither remain neutral nor take sides. The peasants were abject subjects, little better than serfs. The laboring men, as we shall see presently, were achieving a mass consciousness.
In Germany Frederick William, the Romantic, was face to face with revolution. This was not an economic revolution. It was a political revolution. It was joined by the communists and the Socialists. Marx himself, was a leader in the revolt, and one of its most faithful chroniclers. In 1844 the weavers of Silesia rose in revolt. There was rioting and bloodshed. This was followed by bread riots in various parts of Germany. In 1848 the whole country was in the turmoil of revolution, a revolution led by the upper middle class, but prompted and fired by the zeal of the proletarians, who, in some of the cities, notably Berlin, became the leading factor in the uprising. Marx says: "There was then no separate Republican party in Germany. People were either constitutional monarchists or more or less clearly defined Socialists or communists."[1]