ABSTRACT
In the first half of the nineteenth century, some circles in Germany, seeing the widespread social distress in the country, concluded that the equality before the law broadly demanded by liberalism would not eliminate the formidable social inequalities which abounded. Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s pamphlet Der geschlossene Handelsstaat belongs to the beginnings of early socialism. In the social development which led to the rise of capitalism and the growth of a proletariat, Germany was far behind England and France where socialist ideas first appeared and from there made their way to Germany. In 1842 Karl Marx first became a contributor to, and then editor-in-chief of the Rheinische Zeitung, which had been founded shortly before by the leaders of the Rhenish liberals. He went to Paris to join Arnold Ruge in bringing out the Deutsch-Franzosischen Fahrbucher. In this journal he declared that a purely political revolution in Germany was impossible; only a proletarian, social-democratic uprising could achieve liberation.
