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it after it had obstinately refused to carry on the struggle in earnest in spite of his repeated demands that it do so.
The German bourgeoisie—and this is the key to its otherwise unaccountable conduct—did not have in 1862 any more than it had in 1848 and earlier, the stuff for a political revolution. It feared—as I told one of the leaders of the Progressive party to his face in the beginning of the year 1863—it feared a revolution more than a reaction. And Bismarck with his cynical contempt of men and his horse-trader cuteness, soon brought out that fact. The Progressists did not strike him as "imposing;" and the more impudent he was in his intercourse with them the easier he curled them around his finger. To hold the German Social Democracy responsible for the treason to liberty committed by the Prussian Progressive party is not only an insult to historical truth; it indicates also a complete misunderstanding of the role which the German bourgeoisie has played since the middle ages.
I simply put the two facts side by side: In the period of the constitutional struggle when the Progressive party stood at the height of its power and had the people behind it, Bismarck, then in the beginning of his career, turned it down with the greatest ease. In the period of the anti-Socialist law, when Bismarck stood at the height of his power and with all the resources of capitalism was exercising a bourgeois dictatorship, he was turned down by the Social Democracy with the greatest ease, though it had all the political parties against it. That shows who can fight reactionism in Germany and who can not.
The wretchedness of the German bourgeoisie does not, however, release us from the duty of assisting it, wherever it does earnestly oppose reactionism, provided our own interests do not
