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Karl Marx and V. I. Lenin, The Civil War in France: The Paris Commune , (NY: International Publishers, Second Edition, 1993 [1940, 1968, 1988], with an Introduction by Engels [1891] and an essay by Nikita Fedorovsky [1985].
This is precious because it allows us to consider how Engels was already moving toward a revisionist perspective in 1891 but continued to edit and interpret Marx’s work. We can also contrast Marx’s sympathetic account of the Commune with his dismissive account of the proletarian revolutions of the 19th^ century (in the 18th^ Brumaire). Furthermore, we can contrast Marx (1871) and Engels (1891) with Lenin (1934), writing after the Russian Revolution and attempting both to justify Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy and to find evidence in the history of the Commune to justify the questionable decisions made in Russia as the communist leaders attempted to establish a workers’ state without the benefit of an industrial proletariat.
Beginning with Engels, this is an excellent summary of how Marx, in the 18th^ Brumaire and elsewhere, viewed the Parisian proletariat as a potent force in the bourgeois revolutions of 1789 and 1848. As Engels describes the situation, the bourgeoisie (specifically, as we noted in class, the industrial bourgeoisie, although Engels does not make this point here) “had to allow the radical and republican strata of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie gradually to take the lead. Behind these stood the revolutionary workers [so] as soon as the bourgeois republicans [were able to do so] their first aim was to disarm the workers.” (p. 11).
This is Engels’ tale of the Commune: the continuation of the workers’ struggles since 1789, but now much more clearly a radical socialist or communist proletarian struggle. After the defeat of the empire in the Franco-Prussian war, the Republic of Thiers was proclaimed and the Germans withdrew, but the proletarian and petit-bourgeois National Guard continued to rule Paris. When Thiers attempted to disband or disarm them, on March 18, 1871, the Guard chased Thiers and the remnants of Bonaparte’s army back to Versailles. “On March 26 [1871] the Commune was elected and on March 28 it was proclaimed.” (p. 14)
As my former student, Alex Hanna, has argued, the Commune was clearly proletarian, if not in its constitution or in its ideology then, most important, in its actions.^1 As Engels reports, the first acts were to abolish the military conscription (draft), to suspend payment of rents, and to stop forced sales in pawn shops. Soon the Commune declared that its officials would work for workers’ wages, that church property would be confiscated and arrangements made to inventory manufactures and organize industrial cooperatives. Symbolic gestures included the burning of the guillotine and the destruction of monarchical and imperial monuments. (pp. 14-15).
As Engels reports, Thiers eventually was able to convince the Germans to release the French troops they had captured, and Thiers was thereby able to massacre the workers who defended Paris, completing their bloody business before the end of May (the 28th) and thereby ending what Engels proclaimed as the “Dictatorship of the Proletariat” (p. 22). Engels venerates the brave proletarians who fought and died but criticizes their tactics, particularly their reluctance to seize the Bank of France (p. 18). Engels blames the Proudhonist and Blanquist theorists—the former, bourgeois socialists and the latter dismissed as conspiracy theorists. In both cases, however, the leaders were forced to abandon their principles and to follow the revolutionary proletariat. With the exception of their reluctance to seize the assets of finance capital, Engels has no particular criticism of Commune praxis, despite the relative immaturity of French capitalism and the limits of the socialist and communist workers’ parties.
Here Engels has the benefit of having witnessed the split between reformist and Marxist French workers in 1881 (p. 134, n11). He also notes the North American example of national politicians and corruption (anticipating the Progressive Era civil service reform—pp. 20-21) in the course of making his argument that the radical proletariat could not “manage with the old state machine.” (p. 20). Here we can glimpse the sentiments that would underlie the notion of the state withering away (more on that with Lenin, below). As a practical matter, Engels praises the Progressive policies of universal suffrage and the right to recall elected officials, together with the more radical policy of workmen’s wages for all government officials.
Marx’s contributions to this volume include two speeches from 1870 and his essay on the Commune, written just as the dust was settling in 1871. The first two essays chart the failure of the imperial wars of the Austrian, Prussian, Russian, German, and French governments. Marx maintains that these are imperial wars supported by lords and peasants and opposed by the working class wherever it is sufficiently organized to voice its opinion, notably in Germany and France. Again, Marx maintains that the revolutionary duty of the proletariat is to defend the bourgeois struggle for a republic and to oppose imperial wars. The party line, “Like them, we hail the advent of the republic in France” (p. 34). But Marx also warned that the situation in France was precarious. Although the republic was weak it was not likely to fall to an assault by the workers, since the prospect of proletarian revolt would unite dynasties and emerging bourgeois nations in opposition to the radicals. Here too Marx was prescient, since the Germans, still struggling between the Prussian military and the emerging republican governing coalition released the French army in order to facilitate the repression of the Commune. Clearly, Marx
(^1) Hanna argues against the claims of my late colleague, Roger Gould—I can produce references to Gould, my
published review of his book, and perhaps even some of Hanna’s text, if he grants permission: he is currently a grad student at Wisconsin, so we can find him.
some peasants supported the republic.^3 Brittany (conservative peasants) was the only province sent a rag tag army to Versailles (p. 69). So Thiers profited from the treaty of 10 May to gain access to Louis Bonaparte’s military force—released by Bismarck, to massacre to Commune on 28 May (p. 73 on treaty).
Marx paid tribute to the brave men and women who were butchered by these mercenaries.
The self-sacrificing heroism with which the population of Paris—men, women and children—fought for eight days after the entrance of Versailles, reflects as much the grandeur of their cause, as the infernal deeds of the soldiery reflect the innate spirit of that civilization of which they are the mercenary vindicators. (p.75)
Marx clearly saw the Commune as the end of an era—the consolidation of the gains of the bourgeoisie and the end of aristocratic privilege and hegemonic religious authority. From this point forward, the proletariat will be fighting the bourgeoisie in their own name.
After Whit-Sunday 1871, there can be neither peace nor truce possible between the working men of France and the appropriators of their produce. The iron hand of a mercenary soldiery may keep for a time both classes tied down in common oppression. But the battle must break out again and again in ever-growing dimensions, and there can be no doubt as to who will be the victor in the end--the appropriating few, or the immense working majority. And the French working class is only the advance guard of the modern proletariat. (p. 80-81)
There is much we can learn here from Marx writing as a contemporary observer of the Commune. First of all, Marx offers the Commune as an excellent example of proletarian praxis. “The great social measure of the Commune was its own working existence. Its special measures could but betoken the tendency of a government of the people and by the people.” (p. 65). The Commune established the “intellectual lead of the central towns” for the rural population of France and provided the bourgeoisie with “cheap government … by destroying the two greatest sources of expenditure—the standing army and state functionarism.”^4 (p. 60).
Second, and equally important, Marx elaborates the class interests of various actors, much as he did in the 18th^ Brumaire. The petty-bourgeois interest in “debtor and creditor accounts” (p. 62) and the conservative peasant’s interest in land, particularly the small holding, includes antipathy toward the “great landed proprietor” and the bourgeois tax collector (p. 63). In contrast, the Commune offered “enlightenment by the schoolmaster in the place of
(^3) We should consider the extent to which peasants opposed the Commune. It is clear in Lenin (below) that there was
more support in the urban areas (Toulouse, Lyon, and Bordeaux) than in the rural areas, especially in Brittany and Vendee. Whether this represents objective class interests or problems of class consciousness is, of course, critical in debates since Marx’s death. (^4) “Functionarism” or government by functionary is termed “bureaucracy” by Lenin, p. 108. Lenin had the benefit of
Weber’s writing on this subject and the experience of the soviet bureaucracy.
stultification by the priest.” (pp. 63-64). Here Marx considers in detail the peasant’s “delusion” that the empire represented his interest.
Here and elsewhere there are lessons from Marx for students of the sociology of religion. The empire offended petit bourgeois morality. “It had suppressed them politically, it shocked them morally by its orgies[;] it had insulted their Voltairianism.” (p. 63). There is, in addition, as already noted, much here on the sociology of gender. “The women of Paris joyfully gave up their lives at the barricades and on the place of execution.” (p. 76). There is also a running critique of Haussman and the Imperial urban planning project (pp. 66, 78).
Most important, perhaps, is Marx’s prophesy.
Working men’s Paris, with its Commune, will be forever celebrated as the glorious harbinger of a new society. 5 Its martyrs are enshrined in the great heart of the working class. Its exterminators[’] history has already [been] nailed to that eternal pillory from which all the prayers of their priest will not avail to redeem them.” (pp. 81-82)
Lenin’s essay is also important in indicating how he interprets Marx and the lessons that he draws from the Commune. Since we have heard a report on Lenin’s Imperialism but have not read State and Revolution or discussed the practical problems Lenin and his followers faced after Marx’s death in 1883, I will offer only a very brief report on Lenin’s contributions and will preface my report with a few words on context.
If we concede that Engels and Lenin are easier to read than Marx, we can offer two competing explanations of this “fact.” First, because they had the benefit of Marx’s teaching and of looking back (from 1891, 1911, and 1943) at where history supported of failed to support his teachings, they were able to clarify some of the cloudy issues that Marx had not yet worked out. From this perspective, we have Engels, who has read Morgan (the anthropologist) on matriarchy and other pre-tribal societies where exploitation of labor did not exist, and who observed the split between the French opportunist and “true” Marxist wings of the working class unions and parties. With even more hindsight, we could argue that these represent the socialist and communist labor unions (and parties) of 20th^ (and 21st) century France. Thus Engels devotes more attention to the ideological limits of the Commune leadership and their unwillingness to seize the assets of the financiers.
In a similar vein, Lenin, as early as 1908, blames the “Prodhonist theories about a ‘just exchange,’” for the strategic error of the Commune in not seizing the assets of the banks and also criticizes the Commune for “excessive magnanimity …: instead of destroying its enemies it sought to exert moral influence on them.” (p. 97). Here and elsewhere Lenin emphasizes and criticizes the Commune even as he venerates them as proletarian heroes. He is somewhat more inclined to be critical, compared to Marx and even to Engels, and is very clear about the source of its limitations. “Two conditions, at least, are necessary for a victorious social revolution— highly developed forces and a proletariat adequately prepared for it. But in 1871 [in France] both of these conditions were lacking.” (p. 102). Here Lenin sees more clearly than Marx
(^5) Obviously, Marx’s feminist sensibilities are lacking here.
