Brandenburg in the Assembly and the Assembly in Brandenburg. Thus runs the epitaph of the House of Brandenburg. The Emperor Charles V was admired because he had himself buried while still alive. To have a bad joke engraved on one s tombstone is to go one better than the Emperor Charles V and his penal system, his criminal code. Brandenburg in the Assembly and the Assembly in Brandenburg! A King of Prussia once put in an appearance in the Assembly. That was not the real Brandenburg. The Marquis of Brandenburg who appeared in the Assembly the day before yesterday was the real King of Prussia. The guardroom in the Assembly, the Assembly in the guardroom that means: Brandenburg in the Assembly, the Assembly in Brandenburg! Or will the Assembly in Brandenburg Berlin, as is well known, is situated in the Province of Brandenburg be master ... of the Brandenburg in the Assembly? Will Brandenburg seek the protection of the Assembly as a Capet once did in another Assembly? Brandenburg in the Assembly and the Assembly in Brandenburg is an ambiguous expression, which is equivocal and portentous. As we know, it is much easier for the peoples to get the better of kings than of legislative assemblies. History gives us a whole list of abortive revolts of the people against national assemblies. It knows only two important exceptions to this rule. The English people in the person of Cromwell dissolved the Long Parliament, and the French people in the person of Bonaparte dissolved the legislative body. But the Long Parliament had long ago become a Rump, and the legislative body a corpse. Have the kings been more fortunate in their revolts against legislative assemblies than the people? Charles I, James II, Louis XVI and Charles X are hardly promising progenitors. There are luckier ancestors in Spain and Italy however. And recently in Vienna? But one must not forget that a Congress of Nations was in session in Vienna and that the representatives of the Slavs, except for the Poles, went over to the imperial camp with flying colours. The struggle of the camarilla in Vienna against the Diet was at the same time a struggle of the Slav Diet against the German Diet. It was not Slavs, however, who seceded in the Berlin Assembly, it was slaves, and slaves do not constitute a party; at best they are camp-followers of a party. The members of the Right  who left the Berlin Assembly have not strengthened the enemy camp, they have infected it with a fatal malady called treason. The Slav party carried the day in Austria together with the camarilla. It will now fight the camarilla over the spoils. If the Berlin camarilla is victorious it will not have to share the victory with the Right or to defend it against the Right; the Right will be given a tip and kicks. The Prussian Crown is right when it confronts the Assembly as an absolute Crown. But the Assembly is wrong because it does not confront the Crown as an absolute assembly. To begin with it should have arrested the Ministers as traitors, traitors to the sovereignty of the people. It should have proscribed and outlawed all officials who obey orders others than those of the Assembly. But the political weakness characterising the actions of the National Assembly in Berlin may become a source of civic strength in the provinces. The bourgeoisie would have liked so much to transform the feudal monarchy into a bourgeois monarchy by peaceful means. After depriving the feudal party of armorial bearings and titles, which are offensive to its civic pride, and of the dues appertaining to feudal property, which violate the bourgeois mode of appropriation, the bourgeoisie would have liked to unite with the feudal party and together with it enslave the people. But the old bureaucracy does not want to be reduced to the status of a servant of a bourgeoisie for whom, until now, it has been a despotic tutor. The feudal party does not want to see its marks of distinction and interests burnt at the altar of the bourgeoisie. Finally, the Crown sees in the elements of the old feudal society a society of which it is the crowning excrescence its true, native social ground, whereas it regards the bourgeoisie as an alien artificial soil which bears it only under the condition that it withers away. The bourgeoisie turns the intoxicating divine right into a sober legal title, the rule of blood into the rule of paper, the royal sun into a plebeian gas lamp. Royalty, therefore, was not taken in by the bourgeoisie. Its reply to the partial revolution of the bourgeoisie was a full-fledged counter-revolution. Its cry Brandenburg in the Assembly and the Assembly in Brandenburg drove the bourgeoisie once more into the arms of the revolution, into the arms of the people. While admitting that we do not expect the bourgeoisie to answer in a manner befitting the occasion, we must say, on the other hand, that in its rebellion against the National Assembly the Crown, too, resorts to hypocritical half measures and hides its head under the constitutional veil at the very moment when it tries to cast off this irksome veil. Brandenburg makes the German central authority give him the order for his coup d' tat. The regiments of the guards marched into Berlin by order of the central authority. The Berlin counter-revolution is carried out by order of the German central authority. Brandenburg orders the Frankfurt [Assembly] to give him this order. It denies its sovereignty at the very moment when it wants to establish it. Herr Bassermann of course jumped at the opportunity to play the servant as master. But he has the satisfaction of seeing the master in his turn play the servant. Whatever the outcome in Berlin may be, the dilemma is: either the King or the people and with the cry, Brandenburg in the Assembly and the Assembly in Brandenburg the people will be victorious. We may have to go through a hard school, but it is the preparatory school for a full-fledged revolution. But in Berlin the counter-revolution is bringing itself into disrepute. Everything becomes disreputable in Berlin, even counter-revolution. In Naples the lazzaroni are leagued with the monarchy against the bourgeoisie. In Paris the greatest struggle ever known in history is taking place. The bourgeoisie is leagued with the lazzaroni against the working class. In Vienna we have a flock of nationalities who imagine that the counter-revolution will bring them emancipation. In addition the secret spite of the bourgeoisie against the workers and the Academic Legion; discord within the Civil Guard itself; finally, attacks by the people supplying a pretext for the attacks by the Court. Nothing like that is happening in Berlin. The bourgeoisie and the people are on one side and the drill-sergeants on the other. Wrangel and Brandenburg, two men who have no head, no heart, no opinions, nothing but moustaches such is the antithesis of the querulous, self-opinionated, irresolute National Assembly. Will-power be it even that of an ass, an ox, a policeman is all that is needed to tackle the weak-willed grumblers of the March revolution. And the Prussian Court, which has just as little will-power as the National Assembly, seeks out the two most stupid men in the monarchy and tells these lions: represent will-power. Pfuel still had a few grains of brain. But absolute stupidity makes even the grumblers of the March achievements flinch. exclaims the perplexed National Assembly. These Wrangels and Brandenburgs, these blockheads who can want because they have no will of their own, because they only want what they are ordered, and who are too stupid to question the orders they are given with a faltering voice and trembling lips they, too, have discredited themselves because they did not get down to skull-breaking, the only job these battering-rams are good for. Wrangel does not go beyond confessing that he recognizes only a National Assembly that obeys orders. Brandenburg is given a lesson in parliamentary behaviour, and after having shocked the Chamber with his crude, repulsive jargon appropriate to a drill-sergeant, he allows the National Assembly to tyrannize the tyrant and carries out its orders by humbly begging for permission to speak, though he had just attempted to usurp this right. Berlin s calm attitude delights us; the ideals of the Prussian drill-sergeants prove unavailing against it. But the National Assembly? Why does it not use its power to proscribe? Why does it not outlaw the Wrangels? Why does not one of the deputies step into the midst of Wrangel s bayonets to outlaw him and address the soldiers? Let the Berlin National Assembly turn over the leaves of the Moniteur , the Moniteur for 1789-95. And what should we do at the present time? We should refuse to pay taxes. A Wrangel and a Brandenburg understand for these creatures learn Arabic from the Hyghlans that they wear a sword and get a uniform and a salary. But where the sword, the uniform and the salary come from that they do not understand. There is only one means for securing the defeat of the monarchy, and that is to do it before the advent of the anti-June revolution, which will take place in Paris in December.  The monarchy defies not only the people, but the bourgeoisie as well. Defeat it therefore in a bourgeois manner. How can one defeat the monarchy in a bourgeois manner? By starving it into surrender. And how can one starve it into surrender? By refusing to pay taxes. Consider it well. No princes of Prussia, no Brandenburgs and Wrangels produce the bread for the army. It is you who produce even the bread for the army. Cologne, November 13. Just as once the French National Assembly, on finding its official meeting place closed, had to hold its session in the tennis-court, so now the Prussian National Assembly has to meet in the shooting-gallery. A decision adopted in the shooting-gallery declares Brandenburg a traitor. The text, as received from our Berlin correspondent (who signs his articles.), is contained in our special edition issued this morning, but it is not mentioned in the report published in the K lnische Zeitung. However, we have just received a letter from a member of the National Assembly in which he writes: Dumont s reliability is well known. Since the National Assembly has declared Brandenburg a traitor, the obligation to pay taxes ceases automatically. No taxes are due to a government that commits high treason. Tomorrow we shall inform our readers in greater detail how in England, the oldest constitutional country, a refusal to pay taxes operated during a similar conflict. Incidentally, the traitorous government itself has shown the people the right way when it immediately refused to pay taxes (allowances etc.) to the National Assembly in order to starve it into submission. The aforementioned deputy writes further: A fight therefore seems inevitable, and it is the duty of the Rhineland to hasten to the assistance of the Berlin National Assembly with men and weapons.
Marx and Engels in Neue Rheinische Zeitung, November 1848