Engels in Neue Rheinische Zeitung November 1848

The Crisis in Berlin

by Karl Marx

Neue Rheinische Zeitung No. 138 Translated by the Marx-Engels Institute Transcribed for the Internet by director@marx.org, 1994

Cologne, November 8. The situation looks very complicated, but it is very simple. [87]

The King, as the Neue Preussische Zeitung [88] correctly notes, stands "on the broad foundation" of his "hereditary divine" rights.

On the other side, the National Assembly has no foundation whatever, its purpose being to constitute, to lay the foundation.

Two sovereign powers.

The connecting link between the two is Camphausen, and the theory of agreement.

When these two sovereign powers are no longer able to agree or do not want to agree, they become two inimical sovereign powers. The King has the right to throw down the gauntlet to the Assembly, the Assembly has the right to throw down the gauntlet to the King. The greater right is on the side of the greater might. Power is tested in struggle. The test of the struggle is victory. Each of the two powers can prove that it is right only by its victory, that it is wrong only by its defeat.

The King until now has not been a constitutional king. He is an absolute monarch who decides for or against constitutionalism.

The Assembly until now has not been a constitutional but a- constituent assembly. It has so far attempted to constitute constitutionalism. It can continue or discontinue its attempts.

Both the King and the Assembly temporarily acquiesced in the constitutional ceremonial.

The King's demand that a Brandenburg cabinet be appointed at his pleasure in defiance of the majority of the Chamber, is the demand of an absolute monarch.

The Chamber's presumption to send a deputation straight to the King forbidding the formation of a Brandenburg cabinet, is the presumption of an absolute Chamber.

The King and the Assembly have sinned against constitutional convention.

The King and the Chamber have both retreated to their original sphere, the King deliberately, the Chamber unwittingly.

The King is at an advantage.

Right is on the side of might.

Legal phrases are on the side of impotence.

A Rodbertus cabinet would be the cipher in which plus and minus neutralize each other.