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It is known that in the autumn of 1870, a few months before the Commune, Marx warned the Paris workers, proving to them that an attempt to overthrow the Government would be the folly of despair. But when, in March, 1871, a decisive battle was forced upon the workers and they accepted it, when the rising had become an accomplished fact, Marx welcomed the proletarian revolution with the greatest enthusiasm, in spite of unfavorable auguries. Marx did not fall back upon an attitude of pedantic condemnation of an "untimely" movement; unlike the all-too-famous Russian renegade from Marxism, Plekhanoff, who, in November, 1905, wrote to encourage the workers' and peasants' struggle, but, after December, 1905, took up the liberal cry of "You should not have resorted to arms."

Marx, however, was not only enthusiastic about the heroism of the Communards—"storming Heaven," as he said. In the mass revolutionary movement, although it did not attain its objective, he saw a historic experiment of gigantic importance, a certain advance of the world proletarian revolution, a practical step more important than hundreds of programs and discussions. To analyze this experiment, to draw from its lessons in tactics, to re-examine his theory in the new light it afforded—such was the problem as it presented itself to Marx. The only "correction" which Marx thought it necessary to make in the Communist Manifesto was made by him on the basis of the revolutionary experience of the Paris Communards.

The last preface to a new German edition of the Communist Manifesto, signed by both its authors, is dated June 24, 1872. In this preface the authors, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, say that the program of the Communist Manifesto is now "in places out of date."

"Especially," they continue, "did the Commune demonstrate