Such an advice from the proletariat in its struggle for democracy, Marx praised every word of Engels

As early as the end of January 1865, Marx mobilized Engels to write an essay on what attitude the German workers should adopt towards Bismarck. When Marx received the draft of this article on February 9 or 10, he immediately read it through, made some corrections and additions, and urged Engels to publish it quickly. Four weeks later, the pamphlet was published in Hamburg under the title Prussian Military Question and the German Workers' Party.

In this article, Engels explains what tactics the German proletariat must adopt in order to unify Germany on the road of revolutionary democracy. According to Marx and Engels, the only strategy can be adopted, that is, to support the bourgeoisie in the struggle against the feudal reactionaries and to urge them to carry the struggle on.

Why? For the principal contradiction existing in Germany at that time was not the contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, but the contradiction between the part of the people who cared for social progress on one side and the feudal reactionaries on the other. The proletariat, the peasantry, the petty-bourgeois democrats, and the bourgeoisie are all concerned with social progress, while the feudal reactionaries stubbornly want to save the declining social system from extinction.

The Prussian militarist state is the most opposed to democratic solutions to national questions. The working class should never make an agreement with this country. Friedrich Engels therefore called on the working class to unite with the peasantry, with the petty-bourgeois democrats and with a section of the bourgeoisie in order to jointly expel the German monarch, to establish a democratic republic, to unleash the creativity of the German people freely, and to make Germany a bastion of democratic reform in Europe and a defender of friendly relations among nations. Only such a development would serve the interests of the overwhelming majority of the people of the country.

The fate of the German nation was determined by the struggle for democracy. This idea runs through Engels's article like a red thread. Engelstein expressed the eloquence of the bourgeoisie that even when the bourgeoisie, fearing the workers, went to the feudal aristocracy to seek refuge, as had happened between 1848 and 1849, the working class could only continue the struggle for freedoms of the press, assembly, association, etc., and other democratic rights, which had been abandoned by the bourgeoisie, regardless of the wishes of the bourgeoisie. "Without these freedoms, the workers' parties themselves cannot acquire the freedom of movement and fight for these freedoms, but at the same time for the conditions of their own existence, for the air they need to breathe."

Engels pointed out that in order to win socialism, the proletariat must resolutely struggle for democracy. His advice, in which every word was praised by Marx, has far-reaching significance in principle. And this advice is particularly useful for the workers who join the All-German Workers' Federation, for in Germany the freedom of bourgeois democracy inevitably begins with the first aim at militarist Junker and at the feudal bureaucracy. This would make the All-German Workers' Union inseparable from the mass movement of the working class, trying to unite the peasantry and other anti-feudal forces and overcome the character of an organisation aimed at the LaSalle dogma.

Engels said that in any case, either the working class pushes the bourgeoisie forward, or the working class moves forward on its own in the bourgeois-democratic revolution, but it must not be "just the tail of the bourgeoisie, but must appear as an independent party completely different from the bourgeoisie". He pointed out that the workers' party is the conscious part of the class, the vanguard of the working class, which is striving for the interests of its own class.

In this article, Engels also carefully studied the question of universal suffrage, which Lassalle hailed as a panacea. Marx and Engels cautioned that universal suffrage should not be overestimated. Universal suffrage can be very easily abused by the ruling class, which they use in a clever way to serve their reactionary ends. Engels pointed out that universal suffrage can become a fully effective weapon of the working class only when the representatives of the proletariat pursue an independent policy against the exploiting classes in Parliament, while at the same time uniting with and relying on all democratic forces in the people.

These instructions have now been widely disseminated among the most progressive workers in Germany.

(Gemkov's "Marx" reading notes)