KARL MARX

COLOGNE
205
cutions on my back and could be locked up any day - and then I could
pant for money like the deer for cooling streams. But it was important
to make progress under any conditions and not to give up our political
position.' 55 He added that it was 'pure fantasy' to suppose that he could
have left Engels in a fix for a single moment. 'You always remain my
intimate friend, as I hope I do yours.' 56 Marx was much heartened by a
demonstration of popular support on 14 November when he had to
appear before the public prosecutor. According to a government report
Marx was 'accompanied by several hundred people to the courtroom ...
who on his return received him with a thundering cheer and made no
secret of the fact that they would have freed him by force if he had been
arrested'. 57 In reply to this demonstration Marx made a short speech -
his only speech to a public meeting in Cologne - thanking the crowd for
their sympathy and support. At the end of the month he wrote optimistically
to Engels: 'Our paper is still conducting a policy of revolt and
nevertheless steering clear of the code penal in spite of all the publication
regulations. It is now very much en vogue. We also publish daily fly sheets.
The Revolution goes on.' 58
An increasing amount of Marx's time was taken up by the Workers'
Association. On 12 October a delegation had asked him whether he would
take over the presidency of the Association, both Moll and Schapper
being unavailable. Marx pointed out that his situation in Cologne was
precarious as he had not managed to obtain Prussian citizenship and
was liable to prosecution for the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, but he agreed
to take on the job 'provisionally, until the release of Dr Gottschalk'. 59
Some modifications were introduced: half the time at meetings was regularly
given to the study of social and political questions and from November
a lengthy study of the Seventeen Demands was begun.
By December it was quite clear that the disturbances of the previous
three months could have no revolutionary issue. On 5 December Frederick
William took the decisive step of dismissing the Prussian Assembly
and himself proclaiming a Constitution. Marx drew his conclusions in a
series of articles in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung entitled 'The Bourgeoisie
and the Counter-Revolution' which marked a substantia] revision of his
earlier position. According to Marx, since the bourgeoisie had proved
incapable of making its own revolution, the working class would have to
rely exclusively on its own forces. 'The history of the Prussian bourgeoisie',
he wrote, 'and that of the German bourgeoisie as a whole from
March to December demonstrates that in Germany a purely bourgeois
revolution and the establishment of bourgeois rule in the form of a
constitutional monarchy is impossible and that the only possibility is
either a feudal absolutist counter-revolution or a social-republican