Similarly, the wage-workers of the land can be freed from their hideous misery only when the main object of their work, the land itself, will be withdrawn from the private property of the large peasants and still larger feudal masters, and transformed into social property to be cultivated by an association of land workers on common basis.And here we come to the famous decision of the International Socialist Congress in Basle: That it is in the interest of society to transform property on land into common national property.This decision was made primarily for those countries where there is large land ownership, with large agricultural enterprises, with one master and many wage-workers in every estate.It is these conditions that still prevail in Germany, and next to England, the decision was most timely for Germany.The agricultural proletariat, the wage-workers of the land, is the class from which the bulk of the armies of the princes is being recruited.It is the class which, thanks to universal suffrage, sends into Parliament the great mass of feudal masters and Junkers.However, it is also the class nearest to the industrial workers of the city.It shares their conditions of living, and it is still deeper steeped in misery than the city workers.This class, powerless because split and scattered, but possessing hidden power which is so well known to the government and nobility that they purposely allow the schools to deteriorate in order that the rural population should remain unenlightened, must be called to life and drawn into the movement.This is the most urgent task of the German labour movement.From the day when the mass of the workers of the land have learned to understand their own interests, a reactionary, feudal, bureaucratic or bourgeois government in Germany becomes an impossibility.
[ To Engels' intro addendum ]
The Peasant War in GermanyFrederick Engels'
THE PEASANT WAR IN GERMANYENGELS' PREFACEADDENDUM THE preceding lines were written over four years ago, but they are valid also at present.What was true after Sadowa and the partition of Germany is being confirmed also after Sedan and the erection of the Holy German Empire of Prussian nationality.Little indeed are the "world shaking" activities of the States in the realm of so-called big politics in a position to change the trend of historic development.
What these grand activities of the States are in a position to accomplish is to hasten the tempo of historic movement.In this respect, the originators of the above-mentioned "world-shaking" events have made involuntary successes which to themselves appear highly undesirable, but which, however, they must take into the bargain, for better or worse.
Already the war of 1866 had shaken the old Prussia to its foundations.
After 1848 it was difficult to bring the rebellious industrial element of the western provinces, bourgeois as well as proletarian, under the old discipline.Still, somehow, this was accomplished, and the interests of the Junkers of the eastern provinces, together with those of the army, again became dominant in the State.In 1866 almost all the northwest of Germany became Prussian.Besides the incurable moral injury to the Prussian crown, by the fact that it had swallowed up three other crowns by the grace of God, the centre of gravity of the monarchy had moved considerably westward.
