Page:The Paris Commune - Karl Marx - ed. Lucien Sanial (1902).djvu/20

Rh as epigraph the following quotation from the manifesto on the Paris Commune:

Upon this text Longuet, commenting in his preface and appendix, actually "transforms Karl Marx into a precursor of Millerand"; a feat, however, which he regrets that the Ministerialist majority of the Paris International Congress (held in 1900), by failing to avail itself of this quotation, did not give Jules Guesde an opportunity to perform. In his own words, "Marx combated by Guesde—that would, indeed, have been piquant!"

Of course, according to Longuet, had Marx lived long enough to attend that memorable congress, he would have, then and there, voted for the Kautsky resolution. He—who knew so well the irrepressible, merciless character of the class struggle, and to whom, therefore, any scheme of compromission with any fraction, or faction, of the bourgeoisie, at any time, anywhere, or for any purpose, was abhorrent as a crime against the proletariat—would have sanctioned, by his weighty approval, this great Act of Cowardice, unprecedented in the annals of international socialism! How could he have done otherwise? Would not Longuet have told him, as he now tells us, that the Kautsky resolution "corroborates Marx's view [as expressed in the above quotation], which is as true to-day as it was in 1871,