Absolutism and Revolution in Germany 1542-1848

Germany from Luther’s time to the age of Marx saw the rise of Prussian absolutism and the growth of the revolutionary proletariat. Mehring’s book gives a clear and penetrating account of the development of the German state and its history of class struggle. Writing from the standpoint of historical materialism, Mehring reveals how the power of Frederick the Great rested on feudal backwardness, how the impotent German bourgeoisie clung to absolutism in the face of the revolutionary workers of 1848.

This volume begins the publication of a series of first English editions of the major writings of Franz Mehring, the leading Marxist theoretician in German Social Democracy and a comrade of Luxemburg and Liebknecht.