Page:The Paris Commune - Karl Marx - ed. Lucien Sanial (1902).djvu/46

Rh at present for the reason that even the strongest of the great military states shrinks before the absolute uncertainty of the final result?

All the more, therefore, is it our duty to render accessible to the German workingmen these brilliant but half-forgotten documents, which attest to the far-sightedness of the International's proletarian policy in connection with the events of 1870.

What applies to these two addresses, applies also to the one entitled The Civil War in France. On the 28th of May, the last of the combatants of the Commune were crushed by superior numbers on the heights of Belleville, and not more than two days passed, before Marx, on the 30th, read to the General Council of the International the pamphlet in question, in which the historical significance of the Paris Commune is presented briefly, but in words so powerful, so incisive, and above all, so true, that there is no equal to it in the whole range of the extensive literature on the subject.

Thanks to the economic and political development of France since 1789, Paris has for fifty years been placed in such a position that no revolution could there break out without assuming a proletarian character, in such wise that the proletariat, which had bought the victory with its blood, would immediately thereafter put forward its own demands. These demands were more or less indefinite, and even confused, in accordance with the particular degree of development to which the Paris workmen had attained at the time; but the upshot of them all was the abolition of the class contrast between capitalist and laborer. How this was to be done, 'tis true nobody knew. But the demand itself, however indefinite its form, was a danger for the existing order of society; the workmen who made it were still armed; if the