In the early 19th century, a new social collective emerged out of impoverished artisans, urban rabble, wandering rural lower classes, bankrupt aristocrats and precarious intellectuals, one that would soon be called the proletariat. But this did not yet exist as a unified, homogeneous class with affiliated political parties. The motley appearance, the dreams and longings of these figures, torn from all economic certainties, found new forms of narration in romantic novellas, reportages, social-statistical studies, and monthly bulletins. But soon enough, these disorderly, violent, nostalgic, errant, and utopian figures were denigrated as reactionary and anarchic by the heads of the labour movement, since they did not fit into their grand linear vision of progress. In this book, Patrick Eiden-Offe tells their story, tracing the making of the proletariat in Vörmarz Germany (1815-1848) through the writings of figures like Ludwig Tieck, Moses Hess, Wilhelm Weitling, Georg Weerth, Friedrich Engels, Louise Otto-Peters, Ernst Willkomm, and Georg Büchner, and in so doing, revealing a striking similarity to the disorderly classes of today.
Author(s): Patrick Eiden-Offe
Series: Historical Materialism
Publisher: Brill
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: xxiv, 303
Contents
Translator’s Note
Introduction
Introduction
1. Class and Classification, Proletariat and Proletarianisation
Introduction
2. The Proletariat: a Non-identical Subject
Introduction
3. Romantic Anti-capitalism
Introduction
4. Historiography of Rescue
Introduction
5. Proletarian Identity: Openness and (Self-)Enclosure
Introduction
6. Inverse Relevance of the Vormärz
Introduction
7. Literary History as Social History: Class as Figure
Chapter 1. Small Masters and Journeymen: from Guild to Movement
1. Romantic Anti-capitalism: Ludwig Tieck’s The Young Master Carpenter
Chapter 1. Small Masters and Journeymen: from Guild to Movement
1. Romantic Anti-capitalism: Ludwig Tieck’s The Young Master Carpenter
1.1. The Death of the House and the Life of the Factory
Chapter 1. Small Masters and Journeymen: from Guild to Movement
1. Romantic Anti-capitalism: Ludwig Tieck’s The Young Master Carpenter
1.2. The Bourgeoisie as Whole and Part
Chapter 1. Small Masters and Journeymen: from Guild to Movement
1. Romantic Anti-capitalism: Ludwig Tieck’s The Young Master Carpenter
1.3. Becoming Rabble: from Servants to Scum
Chapter 1. Small Masters and Journeymen: from Guild to Movement
1. Romantic Anti-capitalism: Ludwig Tieck’s The Young Master Carpenter
1.4. The Decline of the Guilds
Chapter 1. Small Masters and Journeymen: from Guild to Movement
1. Romantic Anti-capitalism: Ludwig Tieck’s The Young Master Carpenter
1.5. Guild Representation
Chapter 1. Small Masters and Journeymen: from Guild to Movement
1. Romantic Anti-capitalism: Ludwig Tieck’s The Young Master Carpenter
1.6. Affect Politics from Above
Chapter 1. Small Masters and Journeymen: from Guild to Movement
1. Romantic Anti-capitalism: Ludwig Tieck’s The Young Master Carpenter
1.7. Passions and Interests: Leonhard, Adam Smith and Albert O. Hirschman
Chapter 1. Small Masters and Journeymen: from Guild to Movement
1. Romantic Anti-capitalism: Ludwig Tieck’s The Young Master Carpenter
1.8. Political Passions, Aesthetic Taste
Chapter 1. Small Masters and Journeymen: from Guild to Movement
1. Romantic Anti-capitalism: Ludwig Tieck’s The Young Master Carpenter
1.9. Enclosing Class Struggle: Tieck’s Guilds as Invention of Tradition
Chapter 1. Small Masters and Journeymen: from Guild to Movement
1. Romantic Anti-capitalism: Ludwig Tieck’s The Young Master Carpenter
1.10. The End of the Guilds and the Beginnings of the Labour Movement. ‘Traditions’ of Social History
Chapter 1. Small Masters and Journeymen: from Guild to Movement
2. Journeymen Culture and the Workers’ Movement: Wilhelm Weitling
Chapter 1. Small Masters and Journeymen: from Guild to Movement
2. Journeymen Culture and the Workers’ Movement: Wilhelm Weitling
2.1. Journeymen Language
Chapter 1. Small Masters and Journeymen: from Guild to Movement
2. Journeymen Culture and the Workers’ Movement: Wilhelm Weitling
2.2. Journeymen Song
Chapter 1. Small Masters and Journeymen: from Guild to Movement
2. Journeymen Culture and the Workers’ Movement: Wilhelm Weitling
2.3. Journeymen Association
Chapter 1. Small Masters and Journeymen: from Guild to Movement
3. Georg Weerth and the Break with Guild Traditions
Chapter 2. ‘We? Tricky Question!’ on the Search for Class Identity in Proletarian Journals
Chapter 2. ‘We? Tricky Question!’ on the Search for Class Identity in Proletarian Journals
1. Negations: ‘Bourgeois’ and ‘Intellectual Prolatarians’
Chapter 2. ‘We? Tricky Question!’ on the Search for Class Identity in Proletarian Journals
2. Ascension: ‘We’ Want to Be Bürger
Chapter 2. ‘We? Tricky Question!’ on the Search for Class Identity in Proletarian Journals
3. Activation: What ‘We’ Should Be
Chapter 2. ‘We? Tricky Question!’ on the Search for Class Identity in Proletarian Journals
4. Affirmation: ‘We’ Who Raise Our Voices
Chapter 3. Counting the People: Class Statistics
Chapter 3. Counting the People: Class Statistics
1. Statistics and Social Agitation: The Hessian Messenger
Chapter 3. Counting the People: Class Statistics
2. Statistics in the Service of Revolution: Gesellschaftsspiegel
2.1. Rhetoric of Facts: Statistics and Description
Chapter 3. Counting the People: Class Statistics
2. Statistics in the Service of Revolution: Gesellschaftsspiegel
2.2. Exaggeration and Distance: the Style of Criticism
Chapter 3. Counting the People: Class Statistics
2. Statistics in the Service of Revolution: Gesellschaftsspiegel
2.3. Fiction and Correction: Statistics of Prostitution
Chapter 4. Miserabilism and Critique: from the Poverty of Literature to the Poverty of Theory
1. Ludwig Tieck and the Wolves of London
Chapter 4. Miserabilism and Critique: from the Poverty of Literature to the Poverty of Theory
2. German Misery, German Verse: Engels as Narrative Theorist
Chapter 4. Miserabilism and Critique: from the Poverty of Literature to the Poverty of Theory
3. Striking Stereotypes: Ernst Dronke’s ‘Rich and Poor’
Chapter 4. Miserabilism and Critique: from the Poverty of Literature to the Poverty of Theory
4. The Family Romance of the Proletarian
Chapter 4. Miserabilism and Critique: from the Poverty of Literature to the Poverty of Theory
5. Relentlessness
Chapter 4. Miserabilism and Critique: from the Poverty of Literature to the Poverty of Theory
6. Mystères – Misère
Chapter 4. Miserabilism and Critique: from the Poverty of Literature to the Poverty of Theory
7. Misery in Relations: Production, World Market, Needs
Chapter 4. Miserabilism and Critique: from the Poverty of Literature to the Poverty of Theory
8. Poverty and Quality of Life: Disposable Time
Chapter 5. Wage Labour and Slavery: Unfulfilled Promises of Freedom
Chapter 5. Wage Labour and Slavery: Unfulfilled Promises of Freedom
1. Allegories of Class: ‘Steam King’ and ‘White Slaves’
Chapter 5. Wage Labour and Slavery: Unfulfilled Promises of Freedom
2. Point of Comparison: Weitling’s ‘Politics of Slavery’
Chapter 5. Wage Labour and Slavery: Unfulfilled Promises of Freedom
3. The ‘Semblance of Liberty’ and Real Slavery: Engels
Chapter 5. Wage Labour and Slavery: Unfulfilled Promises of Freedom
4. Class Slavery
Chapter 5. Wage Labour and Slavery: Unfulfilled Promises of Freedom
5. Why ‘White Slaves’?
Chapter 5. Wage Labour and Slavery: Unfulfilled Promises of Freedom
6. Theory as Mystification: the Cult of the Industrial Worker and Global Critique
Chapter 5. Wage Labour and Slavery: Unfulfilled Promises of Freedom
7. The Universality of Proletarianisation
Chapter 6. Representing the ‘Labouring Poor’
1. The Possibilities of Literature: Ernst Willkomm’s White Slaves or the Sufferings of the People
Chapter 6. Representing the ‘Labouring Poor’
2. Engels and the Invention of Social Reportage
Chapter 6. Representing the ‘Labouring Poor’
3. The Reporter in the Field: ‘The Great Towns’
Chapter 7. Class in Struggle
Chapter 7. Class in Struggle
1. Witches’ Sabbath as Early Modern Class Struggle: Tieck
Chapter 7. Class in Struggle
2. The Witches’ Sabbath of the Class Struggles in France: Börne
Chapter 7. Class in Struggle
3. Social War on Lake Zurich: Weitling
Chapter 7. Class in Struggle
4. Primitive Rebels in Lower Lusatia: Willkomm
Chapter 7. Class in Struggle
5. Rescuing the Rebels
Chapter 7. Class in Struggle
6. Revenge and Class
Chapter 7. Class in Struggle
7. The Machine Breakers
Chapter 7. Class in Struggle
8. Is It O.K. to Be a Luddite?
Chapter 7. Class in Struggle
9. Towards a Pure Strike: Georg Weerth’s Fragment of a Novel
Chapter 7. Class in Struggle
10. The Struggle for the Family Wage, the Feminisation of Factory Work and the Masculinisation of the Workers’ Movement
Conclusion. The Return of Romantic Anti-capitalism
Epilogue. Romantic ‘Anti-capitalism’ from Above
Bibliography
Name Index
