Preface to Marx-Engels Collected Works Volume (22)

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Volume 22 of the Collected Works of Marx and Engels contains works written between the latter half of July 1870 and the end of October 1871.

In this relatively brief period there occurred the FrancoPrussian war of 1870-71 and what Lenin described as “the greatest working-class uprising of the 19th century” (Collected Works, Vol. 41, p. 113), the proletarian revolution of March 18, 1871 in Paris, during which a working-class state—the Paris Commune— was set up for the first time in history. These events arose from the socio-political and revolutionary crisis that had been building up in Europe for some years. The Paris Commune was a great victory for the working class in the struggle against capitalist exploitation and political domination by the bourgeoisie. The lessons of the Commune threw into sharp relief the further tasks and prospects of the working-class movement. On the basis of this experience Marx and Engels significantly enriched the theory of scientific communism.

Many works of Marx and Engels in this volume directly reflect their practical activities in the International Working Men’s Association (the International).

In the conditions created by the Franco-Prussian war the General Council of the International had to arm the proletariat, especially the French and the German, with an understanding of their class objectives and prevent the wave of chauvinism that surged through both the belligerent countries from swamping the working-class movement. This was a test that the International passed with flying colours. It succeeded in raising the most advanced workers in its ranks from spontaneous actions and an instinctive feeling of class brotherhood to awareness of the need for international solidarity and unity of action by the proletariat as a whole.

The volume begins with the First Address of the General Council of the International Working Men’s Association on the Franco-Prussian War (July 1870) written by Marx. This document contains the fundamental propositions of Marxism on the attitude of the working class to militarism and war. Marx maintains that the aggressive wars were unleashed by the ruling classes to overcome internal crises and to crush the revolutionary movement, above all, that of the proletariat. He analyses the development of the international contradictions in Europe that led to the Franco-Prussian war and sets out the specific tasks for the workers of the various countries in the current situation.

Marx exposes the Bonapartist government in France, which began the war in the name of preserving and strengthening the empire, reinforcing its dominant role in Europe, and preventing the unification of Germany. On Germany’s side the war was, in its initial stage, defensive (see this volume, p. 5). At the same time Marx shows the aggressive role played by the ruling circles of Prussia in its preparation. He makes a clear distinction between the German people’s national interests and the dynastic, rapacious aims pursued by the Prussian Junkers and the German bourgeoisie. Marx warned the German workers that a war led by the Prussian militarists could turn into an aggressive war against the French people: “If the German working class allow the present war to lose its strictly defensive character and to degenerate into a war against the French people, victory or defeat will prove alike disastrous” (this volume, p. 6).

Arguing that the military defeat of the Bonapartist empire would usher in the regeneration of France and remove one of the main obstacles to the unification of Germany, Marx supports the French members of the International in their campaign against the regime of Napoleon III. The Address helped the German Social-Democrats to see how aggressive the policy of Bismarck’s Prussia actually was and how incompatible with the German people’s legitimate national aspirations.

Marx and Engels believed that objectively Germany’s achievement of national unity would .be in the interests of the German working class and would create favourable conditions for its organisation, which, in turn, would help to consolidate the whole international proletariat.

The Address set the task of strengthening the international solidarity of the working class, especially in the belligerent countries. Marx gave a high appraisal of the anti-militarist activity of the members of the International in both Germany and France and saw this as a sign that “the alliance of the working classes of all countries will ultimately kill war” (this volume, p. 7). The development of the workers’ international brotherhood despite the chauvinistic propaganda of the ruling classes, Marx emphasised, “proves that in contrast to old society, with its economical miseries and its political delirium, a new society is springing up, whose International rule will be Peace, because its national ruler will be everywhere the same—Labour]” (this volume, p. 7).

The shattering military defeats of the Second Empire heralded its collapse. Marx noted that in Prussian ruling circles claims were being made for the annexation of Alsace and Lorraine. In these conditions it was especially important to help the German Social-Democrats adopt a genuine class position and strengthen their internationalist views. In a letter to the Committee of the German Social-Democratic Workers’ Party, Marx and Engels urged the German proletariat to come out wholeheartedly against the annexationist plans of the Prussian military and the bourgeoisie.

The Second Address of the General Council on the FrancoPrussian war, written after the collapse of the Second Empire and the establishment, on September 4, 1870, of the French Republic, when the war had lost its defensive character for Germany and become a blatantly expansionist war (see this volume, p. 263), defined the new tactical line of the International. The Address oriented the proletariat of the European countries towards a resolute struggle against the aggressive plans of the Prussian Junkers and the German bourgeoisie. It noted that there could be no justification for the annexation of Alsace and Lorraine, and that the determination of state borders on the grounds of “military interests” only carried “the seed of fresh wars” (this volume, p. 266). With exceptional insight Marx foresaw the consequences of Bismarck’s aggression and the subsequent line-up of rival forces in Europe for several decades.

Developing the principles of proletarian internationalism, the Address outlined the tactics for the various contingents of the international proletariat, thus guiding them towards an understanding of the unity of international and national goals. As in the letter to the Committee of the German Social-Democratic Workers’ Party, Marx oriented the German working class and its party towards a struggle against Prussian militarism, for an honourable peace with France, and for recognition of the French Republic. He stressed the connection between this international task and the fight against internal reaction, against Bismarck’s plans to use the victory over France for an attack on the democratic rights of his own people.

The International also urged the English workers to recognise the French Republic (see this volume, p. 269).

For the French workers it was vitally important, on the one hand, to use all republican freedoms “for the work of their own class organisation” (this volume, p. 269) and, on the other, to avoid being carried away by chauvinistic phrase-mongering. Marx warned the French workers of the untimeliness of any attempt to overthrow the government when the enemy was at the gates of Paris.

Both Addresses, which were official documents of the International, offered the working-class movement scientifically grounded guidelines and proposed an overall solution to both the national and international problems facing the proletariat. One of their crucial features was their resolute condemnation of militarism and wars of conquest.

The 59 articles by Engels on the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-1871, published in London’s Pall Mall Gazette, occupy an important place in the volume. Written in the form of separate military reviews, these articles are, in fact, closely interconnected and constitute a complete and unified whole. Although, under the terms stipulated by the paper’s editors, they should have been confined to purely military questions, Engels often reaches out beyond these limits and gives his reviews a trenchant class and political message. In his “Notes on the War”, which in their political orientation are closely linked with the General Council’s Addresses on the Franco-Prussian war, Engels was actually substantiating the tactics of the International at various stages of the war.

These articles by Engels reveal his detailed knowledge of the home and foreign-policy situations of the belligerent powers— their economic and political systems and, above all, the positions of the various classes and parties. All this, combined with Engels’ truly encyclopaedic knowledge as a military historian and theoretician, enabled him in many cases to predict the exact course of events and their outcome. He uncovered the strategic plans of the headquarters of the Bonapartist and Prussian armies, established the areas and days of the first major battles and the forces that would take part in them (see this volume, pp. 15-16), anticipated the situation that would lead to the retreat of the French army under MacMahon to Sedan (this volume, pp. 32-33) and predicted the place, the approximate date and the outcome of the decisive battle which was fought there (this volume, p. 69). The central idea of the articles was to show the dependence of military operations and the outcome of the war on a country’s internal condition, and Engels’ most important prediction was that the military defeat of Bonapartist France and the consequent fall of the Second Empire were inevitable.

The “Notes” contain much ruthless and far-reaching criticism of Bonapartism. Engels paints a vivid picture of the decay of the Bonapartist regime and its main bastion, the army. “The army organization fails everywhere; and a noble and gallant nation finds all its efforts for self-defence unavailing, because it has for twenty years suffered its destinies to be guided by a set of adventurers who turned administration, government, army, navy—in fact, all France—into a source of pecuniary profit to themselves” (this volume, p. 77). Engels stresses that the Bonapartist regime continued to have a pernicious effect on the army even during the war because its actions were guided by political rather than military considerations. He shows how, because of their fear of the Paris masses, the Bonapartist government refused to send to the front the forces vital for the army, preferring to keep them in the capital as a safeguard against revolution (see this volume, p. 55).

Engels exposes the militarist propaganda of the Prussian ruling circles, who were trying to present the Prussian army as a truly “popular” army, as the “armed people”. “The phrase of the ‘nation in arms’ hides the creation of a large army for purposes of Cabinet policy abroad and reaction at home” (this volume, p. 125). He mercilessly brands the barbaric acts perpetrated by the German command—the bombardment and destruction of cities for which there was no military justification, the brutal treatment of civilians, and the harsh measures taken against the French guerrillas, the francs-tireurs.

The “Notes on the War” form a notable contribution to the development of Marxist military theory. They examine the character of wars—expansionist, defensive, and popular—on the basis of actual facts, and reveal the dialectics of their development. Engels demonstrated how “a war in which Germany, at the beginning, merely defended her own against French chauvinisme appears to be changing gradually, but surely, into a war in the interests of a new German chauvinisme...” (this volume, p. 104). Engels considered in great detail a number of general theoretical problems of the art of war—the role of logistics, the influence of the political and economic state of the country on the course of operations, the correct deployment of troops on the eve of war, the factor of surprise in attack, and so on. He also showed what great changes had come about in the arming and equipping of troops before the war and how these changes influenced the course of military operations.

After the defeat of the regular French armies, Engels focused his attention on the possibility of creating new military formations and organising guerrilla warfare against the invaders. He showed particular interest in the problems of armed resistance to interventionist forces, in the problems of a people’s war, including guerrilla movements, on both the political and the military plane. In complete accord with the line taken in the Second Address of the General Council, Engels resolutely championed the right of the French people to defend their country against enemy invasion by every means. He considered a real war of liberation to be “one in which the nation itself participates” (this volume, p. 193). Engels expected the operations of the guerrillas to inflict damaging material and moral losses on the enemy. “This constant erosion by the waves of popular warfare in the long run melts down or washes away the largest army in detail...”, he wrote (this volume, p. 207). At the same time Engels realised that a decisive turn in military operations could not be achieved without the creation of a powerful regular army. He revealed the causes of the unwillingness of the generals and the new bourgeois republican government of France, who feared the revolutionary upsurge of the masses more than the external enemy, to mobilise the country’s resources to the full.

The articles by Engels, like the Addresses of the General Council on the Franco-Prussian war, clearly demonstrate how fruitfully the method of historical materialism can be applied in the analysis of a complex military and political situation.

Marx and Engels kept a close watch on the events in France, which were systematically discussed at the meetings of the General Council. In the Second Address on the Franco-Prussian war Marx, foreseeing the further intensification of class contradictions in France, alerted the French workers to the need to strengthen their own class organisation. This would give them, he wrote, “Herculean powers for the regeneration of France, and our common task—the emancipation of labour” (this volume, p. 269).

On March 18, 1871 a proletarian revolution broke out in the French capital and led to the proclamation of the Paris Commune, the first working-class government known to history. From the very beginning Marx and Engels saw the Commune as an event of world-wide historical significance. They regarded it as the brainchild of the International, as an attempt by the working class to put into practice the great principles of its movement. Marx saw it as the beginning of a new epoch in world history. “With the struggle in Paris the struggle of the working class against the capitalist class and its state has entered upon a new phase,” Marx noted in a letter to Ludwig Kugelmann on 17 April 1871. “Whatever the immediate outcome may be, a new point of departure of world-wide importance has been gained” (present edition, Vol. 44).

Marx and Engels welcomed the Commune with all the enthusiasm of proletarian revolutionaries supporting its heroic fighters in every possible way. In their speeches at the meetings of the General Council they reported on the course of the Communards’ struggle against the combined forces of the Versailles counter-revolution and the Prussian interventionists (see this volume, pp. 585-86, 588, 590, 593, 595-98). Marx used various channels for establishing contacts with the leaders of the Commune in order to help them avoid mistakes and work out a correct policy. He wrote many letters to the leading figures in the working-class movement of Europe and the United States (see present edition, Vol. 44) to explain the true character of events and expose the slander spread by the ruling classes. With the help of the General Council, led by Marx, a broad campaign in support of the Commune was launched in many countries. The advanced section of the working class and of the progressive intelligentsia in Britain also joined in the campaign.

As soon as the Paris Commune came into being, Marx set about studying and analysing its activities. Published in this volume, the First and Second Drafts of The Civil War in France, where he summed up massive factual material, testify to the exceptional scientific thoroughness with which he investigated the revolutionary creative work of the Communards.

The central position in this volume is occupied by Marx’s outstanding work The Civil War in France, written in the form of an address of the General Council to all members of the International in Europe and the United States of America. Unanimously adopted at the meeting of the General Council on May 30, 1871, it was published as an official document of the International Working Men’s Association a fortnight after the defeat of the Commune and became widely known in various countries.

In The Civil War in France, written in the form of keen political satire, Marx expounds the key propositions of revolutionary theory. The theory of the state, the revolution, and the dictatorship of the proletariat is developed on the basis of the experience of the Paris Commune. Lenin described this work as one of the fundamental documents of scientific communism. In it, he wrote, Marx had given a “profound, clear-cut, brilliant, effective” analysis of the Paris Commune (V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 21, p. 49).

The Civil War in France analyses the historical conditions of the origin of the Paris Commune. As Engels wrote in his 1891 Introduction, this work was an example of the author’s remarkable gift “for grasping clearly the character, the import and the necessary consequences of great historical events, at a time when these events are still in progress before our eyes or have only just taken place” (present edition, Vol. 27). Relying on many years of study of the history of France in general and of the Bonapartist regime in particular, which he had begun in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (see present edition, Vol. 11), Marx revealed the factors responsible for the revolution in Paris.

With biting sarcasm he exposed the leaders of the Versailles counter-revolutionary government, the instigators and organisers of the savage reprisals against the Paris workers. To these “bloodhounds of ‘order” (this volume, p. 350), who in fear of revolution sank to national betrayal and collusion with the external enemy, Marx contrasted the courage, selflessness and heroism of the Communards.

Many years before this, when analysing the revolutionary events of 1848-49, Marx had concluded that the proletariat would play the decisive role in the future revolution. The experience of the Commune confirmed this conclusion. “This was the first revolution in which the working class was openly acknowledged as the only class capable of social initiative” (this volume, p. 336). For the first time in history the proletariat had attempted to assert its political supremacy and establish a new social order.

Study of the experience of the Paris Commune gave Marx new material for further investigation of such a social institution as the state. Drawing on his previous research in this sphere, Marx examines in The Civil War in France and its preliminary drafts the origin and stages of development of the state superstructure of capitalism, the dialectical interaction between this superstructure and the economic basis—capitalist relations of production, and the role of the bourgeois state as an instrument of the oppression of the working people. Its exploitatory essence as a “public force organized for social enslavement” and “an engine of class despotism”, he wrote, remains unchanged, no matter in what forms it appears (see this volume, p. 329).

Because of the class character of the bourgeois state and the political functions of its apparatus of oppression the destruction of the bourgeois state machine becomes a crucial condition for the social emancipation of the proletariat. This conclusion, which Marx had arrived at in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852), was confirmed by the experience of the Commune. “But the working class,” Marx wrote, “cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and wield it for their own purpose. The political instrument of their enslavement cannot serve as the political instrument of their emancipation” (this volume, p. 533). Marx attached special importance to this key proposition of revolutionary theory, which was also clearly formulated in the Introduction that he and Engels wrote to the 1872 German edition of the Manifesto of the Communist Party (see present edition, Vol. 23). As we know, this proposition was further developed in the works of Lenin in its application to the specific features of the imperialist epoch.

In The Civil War in France, Marx demonstrated a dialectical and concrete historical approach, a differentiated attitude to the various elements of the state machine. He did not rule out the possibility of the victorious working class making use of the socially necessary bodies of the bourgeois state on condition that they were democratically reformed.

Up to the time of the Paris Commune the history of proletarian struggle had provided no practical example of what the working class could substitute for the state machine when it had been smashed. Marx saw in the Commune, short-lived though it was, the features of a state of the new type, a proletarian state, which was to replace the bourgeois state established for the oppression of the mass of the working people. The experience of the Commune allowed Marx to enrich revolutionary theory with a concrete conclusion regarding the form of proletarian state that was needed for its historic mission of building a new socialist society. The “true secret” of the Commune, he wrote in The Civil War in France, “was this. It was essentially a working-class government, the produce of the struggle of the producing against the appropriating class, the political form at last discovered under which to work out the economical emancipation of Labour” (this volume, p. 334).

Marx also considers the nature of the new type of state in his speech at the meeting devoted to the seventh anniversary of the International in September 1871. The Commune, he said, “and there could not be two opinions about it ... was the conquest of the political power of the working classes.” The experience of the revolution of 1871, Marx stressed in this speech, clearly proved that to destroy the existing conditions of oppression “a proletarian dictature would become necessary” (this volume, p. 634). Summing up the conclusions Marx reached concerning the new type of state in The Civil War in France, Engels in his Introduction to the third German edition of this work (1891), marking the twentieth anniversary of the Commune, wrote, “Look at the Paris Commune. That was the dictatorship of the proletariat” (present edition, Vol. 27).

The Paris Commune gave Marx specific facts with which to demonstrate the truly democratic nature of the dictatorship of the proletariat as a form of state power. The Commune consisted mostly of “working men, of acknowledged representatives of the working class” (this volume, p. 331). The principles of electiveness, revocability, and responsibility to the people of all organs of power and of all functionaries, the democratic principles of the organisation of the administrative and judicial system, were put into effect. Marx stresses that the Commune was to be “a working, not a parliamentary, body, executive and legislative at the same time”.(Ibid.)

Marx showed the creative character of the Commune’s activity, the way it combined destruction of the organs of the bourgeois state, the instruments of the material and spiritual oppression of the people, with the setting up of new, revolutionary institutions. From this standpoint he analyses the main initiatives of the Commune—the replacement of the standing army by the armed people, the abolition of the police, the separation of church from state, the expropriation of the property of the churches, and the abolition of religious instruction and government supervision in public education. He attaches great importance to the Commune’s social initiatives, to its first steps in expropriating big capital’s property in the means of production and the handing over of idle factories abandoned by their owners to the workers’ cooperative societies.

Marx pointed to the coincidence of the proletariat’s class interests with those of the nation at large as one of the key features of the new type of state. The Commune, he observed, was “the true representative of all the healthy elements of French society, and therefore the truly national Government”, but at the same time it was “a working men’s Government ... the bold champion of the emancipation of labour” (see this volume, p. 338). The Commune was the highest form of proletarian democracy, the form of government where “democracy, introduced as fully and consistently as is at all conceivable, is transformed from bourgeois into proletarian democracy” (V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 25, p. 424).

With the experience of the Commune in mind Marx went on to examine the problem of the allies of the proletariat in the revolution. He analysed the social initiatives that attracted to the Commune not only the indigent populace of Paris but also the middle strata of French society. He expressed his firm conviction that the policy of the Paris Commune as a proletarian state fully corresponded to the essential interests of the working peasantry and that, but for the isolation of Paris from the provinces due to the blockade by the Versaillese, the French peasantry would have taken the side of the Communards (see this volume, pp. 492-94).

In The Civil War in France Marx poses the problem of the period of transition from capitalism to socialism. In his First Draft he notes the lengthiness and complexity of this process, the need to go through various stages of class struggle. The working class knows, he wrote, “that this work of regeneration will be again and again relented and impeded by the resistances of vested interests and class egotisms” (this volume, p. 491). The existence of a political organisation in the form of the Commune, i.e., the proletarian state, is necessary for these socio-economic reforms to be put into effect. “The working class did not expect miracles from the Commune...”, Marx writes in The Civil War in France. “They know that in order to work out their own emancipation, and along with it that higher form to which present society is irresistibly tending by its own economical agencies, they will have to pass through long struggles, through a series of historic processes, transforming circumstances and men” (this volume, p. 335). The classical formulation of the tasks of the transitional period and the dictatorship of the proletariat as the state of this period was later propounded by Marx in his Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875).

From the activities of the Commune Marx also drew material for elaborating the problem of the international character of the working-class struggle for emancipation. Arising out of the specific historical situation in France, the Commune, by taking the first practical steps in the great cause of emancipating labour, embodied the aspirations of the working class of all countries and was “emphatically international” (this volume, p. 338). The advanced section of the working class of Europe and the United States embraced the Commune as its own cherished cause.

The Commune showed the full importance of properly combining the spontaneous and the conscious in the working-class movement. The Communards’ class instinct told them what steps to take. But in the great work of transforming society revolutionary instinct and enthusiasm were not enough. Consisting for the most part of supporters of pre-Marxian forms of socialism, the Commune lacked ideological unity. It was not armed with a revolutionary theory that could ensure a consistent revolutionary policy. The experience of the Commune positively proved the proletariat’s need for a militant vanguard, a political party armed with the theory of scientific communism. It was this task, which had become apparent from the experience of the Paris Commune, that Marx and Engels set before the International and the working class at the London Conference.

The content of The Civil War in France is supplemented in many ways by the preliminary drafts of this work. Although parts of them are no more than rough notes, the bulk are in finished form and are distinguished by the same power and vividness of expression that mark the final text. Both drafts are of independent theoretical value. In these drafts Marx expounded several important propositions more thorougly than in the final version. Here we have his propositions on the historical origins of the Commune, his analysis of its socio-economic initiatives, his characterisation of its policy towards the middle strata, and also his theoretical generalisations concerning the historic mission and tasks of the proletarian state.

Of exceptional importance is the thought, formulated in the First Draft, on the class struggle in the period of transition from capitalism to socialism. Marx pointed out: “The Commune does not [do] away with the class struggles, through which the working classes strive to the abolition of all classes and, therefore, of all class rule”, but it “affords the rational medium in which that class struggle can run through its different phases in the most rational and human way” (this volume, p. 491).

In the drafts Marx goes deeply into the dialectics of the development of state power in the process of the transformation of society, showing the historically transient character of the proletarian state, of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which he regards as a stage in the natural historical process of the withering away of the state. The Commune, he writes, “was a Revolution against the State itself, this supernaturalist abortion of society...” it was “the reabsorption of the State power by society, as its own living forces instead of as forces controlling and subduing it, by the popular masses themselves...” (this volume, pp. 486, 487).

Proceeding not only from the experience of the Commune but also from the results of his own economic research, Marx stressed in the First Draft of The Civil War in France that in the period of the building of a classless society the economic activity of the proletarian state would assume increasing importance. It was the mission of this state to reorganise the whole economy on a new basis, to achieve the “harmonious national and international coordination” of the social forms of production (this volume, p. 491).

Analysing the mistakes of the Communards, Marx declared that, notwithstanding the great breadth of its democratic organisation, the proletarian state must possess sufficiently effective revolutionary organs of power. It must be capable of rebuffing the attacks of the internal and external enemies of the revolution, of defending all that the people have won.

Marx did not gloss over the shortcomings in the Commune’s activity. But he valued, above all, its attempts in the conditions of hardship and siege to set about building a new society. He showed the enormous transforming power of the revolution, which changed the face of the French capital. “Working, thinking, fighting, bleeding Paris ... radiant in the enthusiasm of its historic initiative!” (this volume, p. 341). Here was the true hero of Marx’s work.

The conclusions Marx drew from the experience and lessons of the Paris Commune were developed by him and by Engels throughout their lives. They became the subject of a profound study and creative application by Lenin in the new historical epoch. Developing the ideas of Marxism, Lenin gave solid and convincing grounds for the necessity of the Soviet form of the proletarian state, while allowing that other forms were also quite possible, depending on the specific national historical conditions of the struggle for the socialist revolution.

The international counter-revolution tried to use the defeat of the Paris Commune to suppress the whole working-class movement. The governments of the European states joined forces to intensify repressive measures against the working class and its organisations, particularly the sections of the International. In a number of countries the sections had to adopt an illegal or semilegal position. The reactionary press did all it could to discredit the International and its leaders by publishing various kinds of forgeries and spreading slanderous allegations.

The numerous statements sent to various newspapers by Marx and Engels and, as a rule, published in the form of official documents of the General Council (“Statement by the General Council on Jules Favre’s Circular”, “Statement by the General Council to the Editor of The Times”, Marx’s letters to the editors of the newspapers De Werker, Public Opinion, Le Gaulois, La Vérité, et al.), reflect the energetic campaign Marx and Engels waged against the bourgeois press’s persecution of the International, against the attempts to distort its principles and aims and undermine its authority.

An address composed by Marx in the name of the General Council and entitled “Mr. Washburne, the American Ambassador, in Paris”, exposes the provocatory role of bourgeois diplomacy in the period of the Paris Commune. This document exposes the disreputable, double-faced attitude to the Commune adopted by a diplomatic representative of American capitalist “democracy” (see this volume, pp. 379-82).

The Paris Commune was a turning-point in the development of the international working-class movement. Its lessons were learned by revolutionary proletarian circles. Their urgent task was to strengthen their organisations and achieve ideological unity. Marx and Engels concentrated on helping the new sections of the International in Italy, Spain and other countries, establishing close ties between the sections and the General Council and informing them of its tasks and goals (see this volume, pp. 272-73, 277-80, 294-96).

At the same time the Commune stimulated the polarisation of ideological trends in the working-class movement. The clear statement in The Civil War in France of the International’s revolutionary platform caused the wavering reformist elements to break away from it. In the summer of 1871 the General Council had to condemn the leaders of the British trade unions Lucraft and Odger, who in defiance of the principles of proletarian internationalism struck their signatures off the General Council’s Address The Civil War in France and sided with the bourgeoisie (see this volume, pp. 372-73, 610-11).

The General Council condemned and expelled from the International the right-wing Proudhonist Tolain, who had opted for a deputy’s seat in the counter-revolutionary Versailles assembly rather than fighting for the Commune. The resolution underscored that “the place of every French member of the I.W.M.A. is undoubtedly on the side of the Commune of Paris” (this volume, p. 297).

The materials presented in this volume reflect Marxism’s consistent struggle against anarchism in its Bakuninist form—the main ideological opponent of Marxism in those days. The influence of Bakuninism was growing in Spain, Italy, in Romance Switzerland and in the South of France, which was mainly due to the fact that new sections of the working class were drawn into the working-class movement, sections that were not as yet sufficiently differentiated from other indigent strata of bourgeois society.

The danger of Bakuninism reached a new peak after the defeat of the Paris Commune. Misinterpreting its experience, the Bakuninists presented the Commune not as a proletarian state, but as an example of the abolition of all statehood and the renunciation of all political activity on the part of the working class, as the embodiment of their “federalist ideas”. They alleged that the Commune had vindicated their tactics, based on notions of the possibility of carrying out a revolution in any place at any time without regard to the historical preconditions for it. While claiming leadership of the international working-class movement, the Bakuninists steered a course towards splitting the movement. In a number of countries they set up sections on the basis of their programme, which they presented as the programme of the International. Objectively, the Bakuninists held back the awakening of class-consciousness among the proletariat and hindered the working out of its strategy and tactics in the new conditions. Disassociation from Bakuninism became an urgent necessity for the further development of the revolutionary working-class movement and its political organisation. A very important role in this process was played by the London Conference of the International that took place on September 17-23, 1871.

This volume contains various documents of the London Conference, a prominent place being given to the speeches by Marx and Engels and the conference decisions and resolutions which they drafted and which were afterwards approved by the General Council.

The conference was held to delineate the basic trends in the activity of the International Working Men’s Association under the new conditions.

As can be seen from the minutes the work of the conference focused on the problem of setting up a proletarian party, and the discussion of its programmatic and tactical principles. In his speech at the opening of the conference Marx said that it had been called to “set up a new organisation to meet the needs of the situation” (this volume, p. 613).

The London Conference was the first international forum of the International that took place under the direct leadership of Marx and Engels. Marx was the main rapporteur on all important issues. Engels took a very active part in preparing and conducting the conference.

During the conference, as Engels noted afterwards, at the 1893 meeting to commemorate the Commune, “the question of founding a political party different and distinct from all other political parties was raised” for the first time in the history of the International (see present edition, Vol. 27). This question became the focal point of the struggle against the Bakuninist and reformist ideology.

In the subsequent debate Marx and Engels emphasised that those who even after the Paris Commune still denied the need for “political action” by the working class thereby repudiated the opportunity of its winning political power, the only means by which the working-class movement could achieve its aims. “The experience of real life and the political oppression imposed on them by existing governments—whether for political or social ends— force the workers to concern themselves with politics,” said Engels in his speech. The supreme political act is revolution, the establishment of the political supremacy of the proletariat, but the first condition for this is the creation of a working-class party which “must be constituted ... as an independent party with its own objective, its own politics” (this volume, p. 417). The crucial ninth resolution of the conference, drawn up by Marx and Engels, stated: “against this collective power of the propertied classes the working class cannot act, as a class, except by constituting itself into a political party, distinct from, and opposed to, all old parties formed by the propertied classes; ... this constitution of the working class into a political party is indispensable in order to insure the triumph of the social Revolution and its ultimate end—the abolition of classes...” (this volume, p. 427).

This resolution clearly indicated the basic direction of the further development of the struggle of the working class for emancipation and defined the main objective facing the workers of every country after 1871—the founding of mass political parties of the proletariat. The immediate future showed that this was the course taken by the working-class movement.

As the documents published in this volume demonstrate, other issues that were debated—the significance of the struggle for the democratic rights of the working class, the drawing of peasants into the movement of the industrial proletariat, the development of the women’s working-class movement, the interrelation of the political organisation of the working class and the trade unions, and so on—are all organically connected with the solution of the problem of the proletarian party, with the elaboration of its organisational and tactical principles. Marx and Engels showed that in its political activities the working class and its party should use various means in bourgeois society, combining legal and illegal forms of struggle depending on the conditions under which it had to be waged. They attached great importance to participation in parliamentary elections and getting working-class deputies into parliament. In his speech on political action by the working class Marx cited as an example of the successful use of the parliamentary platform in the interests of the working class the speeches of the socialist deputies Bebel and Liebknecht in the German Reichstag, whose words “the entire world can hear”. Every worker elected to parliament, said Marx, is a victory over the ruling classes “but we must choose the right men” (this volume, p. 617).

The speeches of Marx and Engels and the resolutions passed by the conference against anarchistic sectarianism and adventurism are published in this volume. They sharply criticised the Bakuninist dogmas on abstention from political activity, and demonstrated that, in fact, such abstention would mean the workers’ passive submission to bourgeois policies (see this volume, pp. 411-12, 415-16). One of the conference resolutions banned the setting up of sectarian, separatist organisations. The rules of any section joining the International should conform to the programmatic and organisation principles of the general Rules of the International Working Men’s Association.

The conference opposed the attempts of the Bakuninists, and also the Blanquists to substitute secret conspiratorial societies for mass working-class organisations. In his speech on secret societies Marx noted that “this type of organisation is opposed to the development of the proletarian movement because instead of instructing the workers, these societies subject them to authoritarian mystical laws which cramp their independence and distort their powers of reason” (this volume, p. 621).

At the London Conference Bakuninism suffered a damaging blow, and in the subsequent struggle against Bakuninist sectarianism the decisions of the conference served as a reliable guide for the revolutionary wing of the International.

The conference authorised the General Council to bring out a new edition of the Rules, taking into account all the amendments proposed by the congresses of the International.

The London Conference became a landmark in the development of the international working-class movement, a new step in the process of uniting Marxism with the mass movement of the proletariat. Its decisions determined the programmatic and tactical objectives of the proletarian parties, the creation of which the workers of several countries had already begun. The discussion at the conference and its resolutions reflected the creative development of scientific communism, particularly such aspects of it as the theory of the socialist revolution, of the party of the working class, the tactics of class struggle by the proletariat. The speeches of Marx and Engels at the conference, the documents which they wrote affirmed the organic link between Marxism and the practical aims of the working-class movement.

The significance of the decisions of the London Conference and the historic lessons of the Paris Commune were revealed by Marx in his speech (published in this volume) at the celebration meeting dedicated to the seventh anniversary of the International. Marx noted the role played in the rallying of the militant forces of the proletariat in various countries by the International Working Men’s Association. He ended his speech by saying: “The working classes would have to conquer the right to emancipate themselves on the battlefield. The task of the International was to organize and combine the forces of labor for the coming struggle” (this volume, p. 634). In this struggle for the fundamental restructuring of society the International relied on the historical experience of the first proletarian state—the Paris Commune.

* * *

Of the 82 works by Marx and Engels published in this volume 17—such as “On the Cigar-Workers’ Strike in Antwerp”, “Once Again ‘Herr Vogt’ “, “The Address The Civil War in France and the English Press”, several letters to the editors of newspapers and records of speeches—are published in English for the first time.

The Appendices contain records of the speeches of Marx and Engels at the meetings of the General Council, the resumes of some of these speeches in newspaper reports, and the records of Marx’s speeches at the London Conference of the International. These documents were too imperfect and fragmentary to be included in the main body of the volume. The speeches of Marx and Engels preserved in Engels’ notes are published in the main body. The Appendices also include a newspaper report of Marx’s interview with the correspondent of the New York paper The World, and a letter from Marx’s daughter Jenny to the editors of Woodhull and Claflin’s Weekly. All these documents provide additional material illuminating the activities of Marx and Engels as leaders of the International.

In cases where more or less authentic versions of the documents of the International written by Marx and Engels or with their participation have reached us in several languages, the source— manuscript or printed—with an English text has been used as the basis for publication in this edition. Any substantial variant readings in other languages are given as footnotes.

During the preparation of the volume the dating of works was checked and in some cases corrected, and most of the sources used by the authors were traced. The results of this work are reflected in the endings and the reference apparatus. Any headings supplied by the editors of the volume are given in square brackets. Obvious misprints in proper names, geographical designations, numerical data, dates, and so on, have been corrected by reference to the sources used by Marx and Engels, usually without comment. The spelling of proper names and geographical designations in English texts is reproduced from the originals, collated with reference works of the 19th century; in some cases the modern spelling is given as a footnote. The English paragraphs, sentences and words in the German or French originals are given in small caps or in asterisks. When the exact titles of documents referred to by Marx and Engels have not been established, they are given underfoot and in the index of quoted and mentioned literature as they are cited in newspaper articles, in square brackets.

The first part of the volume was compiled, prepared and annotated by Alexander Zubkov, the second part, beginning with The Civil War in France, by Yevgenia Dakhina (Institute of Marxism-Leninism of the CC CPSU); the preface and the index of quoted and mentioned literature were written by Alexander Zubkov and Yevgenia Dakhina (Institute of Marxism-Leninism of the CC CPSU). The name index was compiled by Tatyana Nikolayeva and the index of periodicals, by Sergei Chuyanov (Institute of Marxism-Leninism of the CC CPSU). The editor of the volume was Tatyana Yeremeyeva and scientific editor Valeriya Kunina (Institute of Marxism-Leninism of the CC CPSU). The subject index was compiled by Alexander Zubkov. The translations were made by K.M. Cook, David Forgacs, Glenys Ann Kozlov, Rodney Livingstone and Barrie Selman and edited by Nicholas Jacobs, Glenys Ann Kozlov, K. M. Cook, Tatyana Grishina and Yelena Kalinina. The volume was prepared for the press by the editor Tatyana Grishina.