1891 Introduction by Frederick Engels
On the 20th Anniversary of the Paris Commune
[PostScript][A]
I did not anticipate that I would be asked to prepare
a new edition of the Address of the General Council of the International
on The Civil War in France, and to write an introduction to it.
Therefore I can only touch briefly here on the most important points.
I am prefacing the longer work mentioned above by the two shorter
addresses of the General Council on the Franco-Prussian War.[Chapter 1 and Chapter 2] In the first
place, because the second of these, which itself cannot be fully understood
without the first, is referred to in The Civil War. But also because
these two Addresses, likewise drafted by Marx, are, no less than The
Civil War, outstanding examples of the author's remarkable gift, first
proved in The
Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, for grasping clearly the
character, the import, and the necessary consequences of great historical
events, at a time when these events are still in process before our eyes,
or have only just taken place. And, finally, because we in Germany are
still having to endure the consequences which Marx prophesied would follow
from these events.
Has that which was declared in the first Address not come to pass:
that if Germany's defensive war against Louis Bonaparte degenerated into
a war of conquest against the French people, all the misfortunes which
befell Germany after the so-called wars of liberation[B] would revive again
with renewed intensity? Have we not had a further 20 years of Bismarck's
government, the Exceptional Law and the anti-socialist campaign taking
the place of the prosecutions of "demagogues",[C] with the same arbitrary
police measures and with literally the same staggering interpretations
of the law?
And has not the prophecy been proved to the letter that the annexation
of Alsace-Lorraine would "force France into the arms of Russia", and that
after this annexation Germany must either become the avowed tool of Russia,
or must, after some short respite, arm for a new war, and, moreover, "a
race war against the combined Slavonic and Roman races"? Has not the annexation
of the French provinces driven France into the arms of Russia? Has not
Bismarck for fully 20 years vainly wooed the favor of the tsar, wooed it
with services even more lowly than those which little Prussia, before it
became the "first power in Europe", was wont to lay at Holy Russia's feet?
And is there not every day hanging over our heads the Damocles' sword of
war, on the first day of which all the chartered covenants of princes will
be scattered like chaff; a war of which nothing is certain but the absolute
uncertainty of its outcome; a race war which will subject the whole of
Europe to devastation by 15 or 20 million armed men, and is only not already
raging because even the strongest of the great military states shrinks
before the absolute incalculability of its final outcome?
All the more is it our duty to make again accessible to the German
workers these brilliant proofs, now half-forgotten, of the far-sightedness
of the international working class policy in 1870.
What is true of these two Addresses is also true of The Civil
War in France. On May 28, the last fighters of the Commune succumbed
to superior forces on the slopes of Belleville; and only two days later,
on May 30, Marx read to the General Council the work in which the historical
significance of the Paris Commune is delineated in short powerful strokes,
but with such clearness, and above all such truth, as has never again been
attained on all the mass of literature which has been written on this subject.
If today, we look back at the activity and historical significance
of the Paris Commune of 1871, we shall find it necessary to make a few
additions to the account given in The Civil War in France.
The members of the Commune were divided into a majority of the
Blanquists, who had also been predominant in the Central Committee of the
National Guard; and a minority, members of the International Working Men's
Association, chiefly consisting of adherents of the Proudhon school of
socialism. The great majority of the Blanquists at that time were socialist
only by revolutionary and proletarian instinct; only a few had attained
greater clarity on the essential principles, through Vaillant, who was
familiar with German scientific socialism. It is therefore comprehensible
that in the economic sphere much was left undone which, according to our
view today, the Commune ought to have done. The hardest thing to understand
is certainly the holy awe with which they remained standing respectfully
outside the gates of the Bank of France. This was also a serious political
mistake. The bank in the hands of the Commune — this would have been worth
more than 10,000 hostages. It would have meant the pressure of the whole
of the French bourgeoisie on the Versailles government in favor of peace
with the Commune. but what is still more wonderful is the correctness of
so much that was actually done by the Commune, composed as it was of Blanquists
and Proudhonists. naturally, the Proudhonists were chiefly responsible
for the economic decrees of the Commune, both for their praiseworthy and
their unpraiseworthy aspects; as the Blanquists were for its political
actions and omissions. And in both cases the irony of history willed —
as is usual when doctrinaires come to the helm — that both did the opposite
of what the doctrines of their school proscribed.
Proudhon, the Socialist of the small peasant and master-craftsman,
regarded association with positive hatred. He said of it that there was
more bad than good in it; that it was by nature sterile, even harmful,
because it was a fetter on the freedom of the workers; that it was a pure
dogma, unproductive and burdensome, in conflict as much with the freedom
of the workers as with economy of labor; that its disadvantages multiplied
more swiftly than its advantages; that, as compared with it, competition,
division of labor and private property were economic forces. Only for the
exceptional cases — as Proudhon called them — of large-scale industry
and large industrial units, such as railways, was there any place for the
association of workers. (Cf. Idee Generale de la Revolution, 3 etude.)
By 1871, even in Paris, the centre of handicrafts,large-scale
industry had already so much ceased to be an exceptional case that by far
the most important decree of the Commune instituted anorganization of large-scale
industry and even of manufacture which was not based only on the association
of workers in each factor, but also aimed at combining all these associations
in one great union; in short an organization which, as Marx quite rightly
says in The Civil War, must necessarily have led in the end to communism,
that is to say, the direct antithesis of the Proudhon doctrine. And, therefore,
the Commune was also the grave of the Proudhon school of socialism. Today
this school has vanished from French working class circles; among them
now, among the Possibilists no less than among the "Marxists", Marx's theory
rules unchallenged. Only among the "radical" bourgeoisie are there still
Proudhonists.
The Blanquists fared no better. Brought up in the school of conspiracy,
and held together by the strict discipline which went with it, they started
out from the viewpoint that a relatively small number of resolute, well-organized
men would be able, at a given favorable moment, not only seize the helm
of state, but also by energetic and relentless action, to keep power until
they succeeded in drawing the mass of the people into the revolution and
ranging them round the small band of leaders. this conception involved,
above all, the strictest dictatorship and centralization of all power in
the hands of the new revolutionary government. And what did the Commune,
with its majority of these same Blanquists, actually do? In all its proclamations
to the French in the provinces, it appealed to them to form a free federation of all French Communes with Paris, a national organization, which for the
first time was really to be created by the nation itself. It was precisely
the oppressing power of the former centralized government, army, political
police and bureaucracy, which napoleon had created in 1798 and since then
had been taken over by every new government as a welcome instrument and
used against its opponents, it was precisely this power which was to fall
everywhere, just as it had already fallen in Paris.
From the outset the Commune was compelled to recognize that the
working class, once come to power, could not manage with the old state
machine; that in order not to lose again its only just conquered supremacy,
this working class must, on the one hand, do away with all the old repressive
machinery previously used against it itself,and, on the other, safeguard
itself against its own deputies and officials, by declaring them all, without
exception, subject to recall at any moment. What had been the characteristic
attribute of the former state? Society had created its own organs to look
after its common interests, originally through simple division of labor.
But these organs, at whose head was the state power, had in the course
of time, in pursuance of their own special interests, transformed themselves
from the servants of society into the masters of society, as can be seen,
for example, not only in the hereditary monarchy, but equally also in the
democratic republic. Nowhere do "politicians" form a more separate, powerful
section of the nation than in North America. There, each of the two great
parties which alternately succeed each other in power is itself in turn
controlled by people who make a business of politics, who speculate on
seats in the legislative assemblies of the Union as well as of the separate
states, or who make a living by carrying on agitation for their party and
on its victory are rewarded with positions.
It is well known that the Americans have been striving for 30
years to shake off this yoke, which has become intolerable, and that in
spite of all they can do they continue to stink ever deeper in this swamp
of corruption. It is precisely in America that we see best how there takes
place this process of the state power making itself independent in relation
to society, whose mere instrument it was originally intended to be. Here
there exists no dynasty, no nobility, no standing army, beyond the few
men keeping watch on the Indians, no bureaucracy with permanent posts or
the right to pensions. and nevertheless we find here two great gangs of
political speculators, who alternately take possession of the state power
and exploit it by the most corrupt means and for the most corrupt ends
— and the nation is powerless against these two great cartels of politicians,
who are ostensibly its servants, but in reality exploit and plunder it.
Against this transformation of the state and the organs of the
state from servants of society into masters of society — an inevitable
transformation in all previous states — the Commune made use of two infallible
expedients. In this first place, it filled all posts — administrative,
judicial, and educational — by election on the basis of universal suffrage
of all concerned, with the right of the same electors to recall their delegate
at any time. And in the second place, all officials, high or low, were
paid only the wages received by other workers. The highest salary paid
by the Commune to anyone was 6,000 francs. In this way an effective barrier
to place-hunting and careerism was set up, even apart from the binding
mandates to delegates to representative bodies which were also added in
profusion.
This shattering of the former state power and its replacement
by a new and really democratic state is described in detail in the third
section of The Civil War. But it was necessary to dwell briefly
here once more on some of its features, because in Germany particularly
the superstitious belief in the state has been carried over from philosophy
into the general consciousness of the bourgeoisie and even to many workers.
According to the philosophical notion, the state is the "realization of
the idea" or the Kingdom of God on earth, translated into philosophical
terms, the sphere in which eternal truth and justice is or should be realized.
And from this follows a superstitious reverence for the state and everything
connected with it, which takes roots the more readily as people from their
childhood are accustomed to imagine that the affairs and interests common
to the whole of society could not be looked after otherwise than as they
have been looked after in the past, that is, through the state and its
well-paid officials. And people think they have taken quite an extraordinary
bold step forward when they have rid themselves of belief in hereditary
monarchy and swear by the democratic republic. In reality, however, the
state is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by another,
and indeed in the democratic republic no less than in the monarchy; and
at best an evil inherited by the proletariat after its victorious struggle
for class supremacy, whose worst sides the proletariat, just like the Commune,
cannot avoid having to lop off at the earliest possible moment, until such
time as a new generation, reared in new and free social conditions, will
be able to throw the entire lumber of the state on the scrap-heap.
Of late, the Social-Democratic philistine has once more been filled
with wholesome terror at the words: Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Well
and good, gentlemen, do you want to know what this dictatorship looks like?
Look at the Paris Commune. That was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.
Frederick Engels
London, on the 20th anniversary
of the Paris Commune, March 18, 1891.
Next: [Contemporary News Articles]
[A]
At the time Engels wrote the Introduction he was writing for the large audience who had already read the popular book by Marx. His intention was to give new historical data, making for a preface that would remind readers of the content inside the book, but also provide additional postscript information to prompt the reader to reread the work in whole. In this publication we have put the postscript information into this file, and the historical background and detailed account of the Civil War into the introduction. In the original document, the introductory information was placed before the section break above (i.e. following the paragraph ending: "...as has never again been attained on all the mass of literature which has been written on this subject.")
[B]
The national liberation war of the German people against Napoleon's rule in 1813-14.
[C]
In the 1820's in Germany "demagogues" was applied to the participants in the Opposition movement among the German intelligentsia, who came out against the reactionary political system in the German states and advocated the unification of Germany. "Demagogues" were ruthlessly persecuted by the authorities.