Of immense interest, these letters to Engels and Kugelmann as the events in France were unfolding, show Marx as revolutionary tactician. Curated and notated by Avrom Landy.

‘The Paris Commune in Marx’s Correspondence’ (1871) from The Communist. Vol. 6 No. 1. March, 1927.

1. ENGELS TO MARX.¹

IF ANYTHING can be done in Paris, we must, prevent the workers from cutting loose before peace is concluded. Bismarck will soon be in a position to conclude peace whether through the capture of Paris or whether the European situation forces him to put an end to the war. No matter what the peace be, it must be concluded before the workers can do anything at all. If they win now–in the service of National Defense–they will have to take over the inheritance of Bonaparte and the present bourgeois republic and will be uselessly hewn down by the German armies and once more thrown back by twenty years. They themselves can lose nothing by waiting for the end. Besides, the contingent border adjustments are only provisional. To fight for the bourgeoisie against the Prussians would be madness. Whoever it be, the government, which concludes peace will by that very fact make it impossible for itself to endure long and there will not be very much to fear from the army returning from captivity. After the peace is concluded the chances will all be more favorable for the workers than they ever were before. But won’t they allow themselves to be torn along again under pressure of the external attack and proclaim the social republic on the eve of the storming of Paris? It would be horrible, if, as a last act of war, the German armies had a barricade battle to fight out against the Parisian workers. It would set us back fifty years and so dislocate everything that everyone and everything would get into a false position and then the national hate and the domination of phrases which would THEN arise among the French workers!

It is damned bad that the people who dare to see things as they REALLY ARE in the present situation are so rare in Paris. Where is there one in Paris who even dares to THINK that the active power of resistance of France for this war is broken and that thereby the prospect of expelling the invaders by a revolution is gone! But just because the people don’t WANT to hear the actual truth, I fear that it will still come to that. For the apathy of the workers BEFORE the fall of the Empire will surely have changed now.

2. MARX TO KUGELMANN.

London, April 12, 1871,

My dear friend!

If you look at the last chapter of my “Eighteenth Brumaire”, you will find that I declare the next attempt of the French revolution to be: not merely to hand over, from one hand to another, the burocratic and military machine, as has occurred hitherto–but to SHATTER it; and this is the preliminary condition of any real people’s revolution on the continent. This, too, is the attempt of our heroic Parisian comrades. What elasticity, what historic initiative, what capacity for sacrifice in these Parisians. After six months of starvation and ruin more as a result of inner betrayal than of the external enemy, they arise beneath Prussian bayonets, as if a war between France and Germany never existed and the enemy were not yet standing before the gates of Paris. History has no similar example of simi- lar greatness. If they are defeated, it will only be the fault of their “good naturedness”. They should have marched on Versailles at once after Vinoy, then the reactionary part of the Parisian National Guard had quit the field of their own accord. The right moment was missed because of qualms of conscience. They did not want to BEGIN the CIVIL WAR; as if the mischievous abortion Thiers had not already begun the civil war with his attempt at the disarming of Paris. Second error: The central committee gave up its power too soon in order to make room for the Commune. Again because of a too “honorable” scrupulousness. Be that as it may, the present uprising of Paris–even if submitting to the wolves, swine and common curs of the old society is the most glorious deed of our party since the June insurrection. Compare with these heaven-stormers of Paris the heaven–slaves of the German-Prussian holy Roman Empire with its posthumous masquerades scenting of barracks, church, country-squire and above all, philistinism.

Your Karl Marx.

3. MARX TO KUGELMANN.

Dear Kugelmann:

April 17, 1871.

Your letter arrived all right. At this moment my hands are full. Hence only a few words. How can you compare petty bourgeois demonstration a la June 13, 1849² etc., to the present struggle in Paris is entirely incomprehensible to me.

World history, to be sure, would be very convenient to make were the struggle to be taken up only on the guarantee of infallibly favorable conditions. On the other hand, it would be of a very mystical nature if “accidents” played no role. These accidents naturally fall in the general process of development of their own accord and are compensated again by other accidents. But hastening and retarding are very much dependent upon such “accidents”, among which the “accident” of the character of the people who stand foremost at the head of the movement also figures.

The decisively unfavorable “accident” is this time in no way to be sought in the general conditions of French society, but in the presence of the Prussians in France and their position close before Paris. Just because of that they placed the Parisians before the alternative of either taking up the struggle or of yielding without a struggle. The demoralization of the working class in the latter case would have been a much greater misfortune than the fall of an arbitrary number of “leaders”. The struggle of the working class with the capitalist class, and its state has entered a new phase through the Parisian struggle. No matter how the thing turns out now, a new point of departure of world importance has been won. Adio. Karl Marx.

4. MARX TO KUGELMANN.

Dear Kugelmann,

London, June 18, 1871.

You must excuse my silence. Even now I only have time to write you a few lines.

You know that during the entire time of the Paris revolution I was continually denounced as the “grand chief of the International” by the Versaille sheet (Stiber³ co-operating) and by repercussion by the local journals. Now a word yet about the Address⁴ which you will have received. It is making the devil of a noise and at this moment I have the honor of being the best calumniated and the most menaced man of London. That really does one good after twenty years of a tedious “Sumpfidylle”.⁵ The government sheet-the “Observer”—is threatening me with legal prosecution. Let them dare. I laugh at the dogs! I am including a cut from the Eastern Post because our answer to Jules Favres’ circular is there. Our answer originally appeared in the Times of June 13th. This honorable journal has received a stiff calling down from Mr. Bob Low (chancellor of the Exchequer and member of the supervision committee of the Times) for this indiscretion.

Your Karl Marx.

The following is the letter of June 13th to which Marx refers above: “To the Editor of the “Times’.

“Sir: On June 6, 1871, M. Jules Favre issued a circular to all the European Powers, calling upon them to hunt down the International Workingmen’s Association. A few remarks will suffice to characterize that document.

“In the very preamble of our statutes it is stated that the International was founded ‘September 28, 1864, at a public meeting held at Saint Martin’s Hall, Long Acre, London.’ For purposes of his own Jules Favre puts back the date of its origin before 1862.

“In order to explain our principles, he professes to quote ‘their (the International’s) sheet of the 25th of March, 1869.’ And then what does he quote? The sheet of a society which is not the International. This sort of maneuver he already recurred to when, still a comparatively young lawyer, he had to defend the NATIONAL newspaper, prosecuted for libel by Cabet. Then he pretended to read extracts from Cabet’s pamphlets while reading interpolations of his own a trick exposed while the Court was sitting, and which, for the indulgence of Cabet, would have been punished by Jules Favre’s expulsion from the Paris bar. Of all the documents quoted by him as documents of the International, not one belongs to the International. He says, for instance, ‘the Alliance declares itself atheist, says the General Council, constituted in London in July, 1869.’ The General Council never issued such a document. On the contrary, it issued a document which quashed the original statutes of the ‘Alliance’-L’Alliance de la Democratie Socialiste at Geneva-quoted by Jules Favre.

Throughout his circular, which pretends in part also to be directed against the Empire, Jules Favre repeats against the International but the police inventions of the public prosecutors of the Empire, and which broke down miserably even before the law courts of that Empire.

“It is known that in its two addresses (of July and September last) on the late war, the General Council of the International denounced the Prussian plans of conquest against France. Later on, Mr. Reitlinger, Jules Favre’s private secretary, applied though of course in vain, to some members of the General Council for getting up by the Council a demonstration against Bismarck, in favor of the Government of National Defense; they were particularly requested not to mention the Republic. The preparations for a demonstration with regard to the expected arrival of Jules Favre in London were made certainly with the best of intentions–in spite of the General Council, which, in its address of the 9th of September, had distinctly forewarned the Paris workmen against Jules Favre and his colleagues. “What would Jules Favre say, if, in its turn, the International were to send a circular on Jules Favre to all the Cabinets of Europe, drawing their particular attention to the documents published at Paris by the late M. Milliere?

“I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

“John Hales,

“Secretary to the General Council of the International Workingmen’s Association.

“256, High Holborn, W. C., June 12th.”

NOTES

1. (Engels to Marx. Manchester, September 12, 1870.. “Der Briefwechsel z. Engels u. Marx” herausgegeben von Bernstein u. Bebel. Vol. 4, p. 335-336.)

2. On June 13, 1849, a demonstration of the Mountain party took place against the forceful overthrow of the Roman republic by French troops. It was easily dispersed, sealing the bankruptcy of the petty bourgeois revolutionary democracy in France.

3. One of the most hated Prussian police agents.

4. Of the General Council on the Civil War in France.

5. Swamp-idyl, i.e., twenty years of a tedious uneventful life in the midst of a bog.

There are a number of journals with this name in the history of the movement. This ‘Communist’ was the main theoretical journal of the Communist Party from 1927 until 1944. Its origins lie with the folding of The Liberator, Soviet Russia Pictorial, and Labor Herald together into Workers Monthly as the new unified Communist Party’s official cultural and discussion magazine in November, 1924. Workers Monthly became The Communist in March, 1927 and was also published monthly. The Communist contains the most thorough archive of the Communist Party’s positions and thinking during its run. The New Masses became the main cultural vehicle for the CP and the Communist, though it began with with more vibrancy and discussion, became increasingly an organ of Comintern and CP program. Over its run the tagline went from “A Theoretical Magazine for the Discussion of Revolutionary Problems” to “A Magazine of the Theory and Practice of Marxism-Leninism” to “A Marxist Magazine Devoted to Advancement of Democratic Thought and Action.” The aesthetic of the journal also changed dramatically over its years. Editors included Earl Browder, Alex Bittelman, Max Bedacht, and Bertram D. Wolfe.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/communist/v06n01-mar-1927-communist.pdf