Page:The Paris Commune - Karl Marx - ed. Lucien Sanial (1902).djvu/31

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Here, then, was a Congress asserting itself as the world's labor parliament, whose powers were such, in its own declared opinion, that it could not only institute an executive to carry out its decisions and those of its predecessors, but order the socialist representatives elected to the parliaments of various countries to come together under the supervision of that executive and in coöperation with it determine the policy—the tactics—which all must adopt concerning matters that may in any way affect the laboring class. Yet, two days later, this same Congress, by adopting the Kautsky resolution, declared itself impotent to take action upon a matter that was causing a deeper agitation in the world's proletariat than had been produced by any other event since the Paris Commune.

Let us, indeed, thank Longuet for his suggestive audacity; by all means let us compare Marx's manifesto on the fall of the Commune with the Kautsky resolution.