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 petit 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.
seemed to anticipate both the Commune and its defeat in expressing his concerns, in September
of 1870 (p. 34). Lenin picks up these threads later.
For Marxists, workers, and Francophiles, Marx’s essay on the Commune is a real tear
jerker. Those students and workers who launched the General Strike of 1968 (also in Paris)
imitated and venerated the Commune. One of their singer/songwriters sang the praises of the
Communards. The French students, socialist and communist labor organizers, and many
members of the faculty (and other liberal professional types) were also very supportive of the
Commune. Even though Marx had premonitions regarding the “folly” of a proletarian assault on
the army of the Third Republic, it is clear that the proletarian heroes of the Commune were
following his advice and opposing the Republic when it attempted to ensconce itself as an
oppressive institution, a bourgeois republic surrounded by imperial and royal patrons. Marx
recognized that the Parisian proletariat was precocious, but he did not criticize them for their
bold, heroic efforts, even as he believed they were doomed to fail. His only hint of criticism was
that they were not bold enough when they had Thiers and his army on the run. “Had the
government of the Commune been akin to that of M. Thiers, there would have been no more
occasion to suppress Party of Order papers at Paris than there was to suppress Commune papers
at Versailles.” (p. 66).
Marx was thoroughly impressed with the way in which the Parisian proletariat confirmed
his faith that the revolution did not need him (or, by extension, Proudhon, Blanqui, Trotsky or
Lenin) to provide them with a road map of plans for what to do after seizing control of the state.
Clearly, they could not use the centralized, patriarchal, imperial/monarchical or even republican
or parliamentary form of class oppression. But they figured this out for themselves. They
instructed Marx and Engels (as Engels noted later in a 1872 preface to the Communist
Manifesto) on the policies and procedures that the Parisian proletariat needed to follow. “But
indeed the Commune did not pretend to infallibility, the invariable attribute of all governments
of the old stamp. It published its doings and sayings, it initiated the public into all its
shortcomings.” (p. 67). At the same time, however, “for the first time since the days of February
1848, the streets of Paris were safe, and that without any police of any kind.” (p. 67).
Even the prostitutes followed their clients to Versailles. “In their stead, the real women
of Paris showed again at the surface—heroic, noble, and devoted, like the women of antiquity.
Working, thinking, fighting, bleeding Paris—almost forgetful, in its incubation of the new
society, of the cannibals at its gates” (p. 68).
Marx goes on to tell the story of fraud, intrigue, corruption, and criminal mischief
perpetrated by Thiers in the name of the republic. Clearly, the bloodthirsty opportunist
ultimately sacrificed the lives of his fellow citizens and the honor and dignity of his nation to
convince Bismarck to release the remains of Bonaparte’s army in order to crush the Commune.2
Other than Bismarck and the remnants of the aristocracy—the Rurals, as Marx calls them, only
“Opportunist” is my term and should not be confused with the bourgeois socialists whom Lenin (p. 121) terms the
“opportunists.” Marx usually refers to Thiers as “M. Thiers,” although in Marxist-Leninist rhetoric he is sometimes
ridiculed as “the dwarf” (by Lenin, p.103) Apparently M. Thiers was a little man, so the Napoleon complex might
apply here, if Freud were offering an analysis. We will talk more about Freud’s conservative dialectics when we
read Civilization and its Discontents.
2
some peasants supported the republic.3 Brittany (conservative peasants) was the only province
that 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 the
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 petit-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 or 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.
because he has struggled with the practical problems of leading a revolution without an
adequately developed capitalist economy or an adequately organized industrial proletariat. Lenin
makes this point forcefully in arguing, “[T]here are times when the interests of the proletariat call
for ruthless extermination of its enemies in open armed clashes. This was first demonstrated by
the French proletariat in the Commune and brilliantly confirmed by the Russian proletariat in the
December uprising.”6
The last item of interest in this account of Lenin’s progress beyond Marx is the
discussion of “popular revolution” and “proletarian” revolution, with particular concern about
the peasants. The Marxist-Leninist party line is clear on this point.
The Great majority of peasants in every capitalist country where peasants exist
(and the majority of capitalist countries are of this kind) is oppressed by the
government and longs for its overthrow, longs for “cheap” government. This can
be realised only by the proletariat; and by realising it, the proletariat makes at the
same time a step towards the Socialist reconstruction of the state.
We could, of course, take a more revisionist (syndicalist anarchist or bourgeois socialist)
perspective on Engels, the popularizer, who offers a Cliff Notes version of Capital in Socialism:
Utopian and Scientific, and a confused history without materialism or dialectics in Origin of the
Family, Private Property, and the State. From this perspective it is Lenin who is the opportunist,
who attempts to legitimate his version (soviet) of the Commune as a better alternative
(particularly when compared to parliamentary and federal systems offered by Proudhonists (pp.
113-129). From this critical perspective, there is much self-serving nonsense in Lenin’s attempt
to reconstruct Marx’s insightful analysis of the Commune. Lenin follows Engels in celebrating
the dictatorship of the proletariat (p. 117) that would ultimately create the socialist utopia that
peasants crave but cannot imagine, at which point “the state begins to wither away.” (p. 111)
Somewhere between these extremes, a scientific if not objective analysis of Engels,
Marx, and Lenin on the Commune should be possible. We lack some of the necessary tools, but
we should come back to these concerns. Perhaps you will consider them in SOC 602.
Here Lenin is referring to “the [Russian] revolution of 1905-1907,” which Fedorovsky compares to the French
Commune of 1871 (p. 179).
6