Page:The Paris Commune - Karl Marx - ed. Lucien Sanial (1902).djvu/34

Rh French proletariat. In this he rightly saw the basic element of proletarian organization. Straight into that organization, more and more class-conscious, the newly discovered economic truth would naturally, irresistibly, force its way, driving out of it the fogs of sophistry.

The class struggle, to be sure, is not a principle, it is a fact; but in the clear perception of it at all times and under all circumstances, lies the fundamental requirement of correct tactics. Once the class struggle is fully seen in the broad light of history, once its inexorable and irrepressible character fully comprehended, class compromise logically becomes an obvious impossibility, which it were utopian or criminal according to motive, and inevitably most harmful, to attempt or to commend as a proletarian policy. There can be no end to the class struggle, and no relief from its horrors, until the battle shall have been fought out to a finish; that is, until the working class, the only class fit to survive, the only class, in fact, that cannot die, shall have won it.

In that spirit and upon those lines the International gained in France the required foothold. We know the sequel. "Economic peace between the classes" came at last to an end. It was the only title of Louis Bonaparte to the fidelity of the bourgeoisie. For its sake this class had resigned in his hand the political power; it had repudiated or silenced its own political mouthpieces; its Orleanist and republican factions had jointly disowned in his favor their respective political idols; it had tamely submitted to the reckless extravagance of his corrupt court; it had patiently borne the steadily increasing burden of taxation, for which its scandalous enrichment