*State and Revolution, Part 6a*

Louis Bonaparte lampoon
*Louis Bonaparte as a bat, balancing Thiers and the Republic*

*The Civil War in France *

In "*The State and Revolution
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/index.htm>*"
Lenin goes through (some of) the Marxist classics. He devoted a full
chapter to the Paris Commune, basing it on Marx's classic book "*The
Civil War in France
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/inde...>*".

A downloadable file of Chapter 5 of Marx's book is attached, and linked
below.

Early on in his "*Paris Commune
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/ch05...>*"
chapter, Lenin refers to the Communist Manifesto, pointing out that it
was modified by Marx and Engels after 1871. This is what Lenin says,
while quoting them:

'The last preface to the 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 Frederick Engels, say that the programme of the
Communist Manifesto "has in some details become out-of-date", and they
go on to say:

/'"... One thing especially was proved by the Commune, viz., that 'the
working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery
and wield it for its own purposes'...."[1] /

'The authors took the words that are in single quotation marks in this
passage from Marx's book, /The Civil War in France/.'

Lenin goes on:

'Marx's idea is that the working class must break up, smash the
"ready-made state machinery", and not confine itself merely to laying
hold of it.

'On April 12, 1871, i.e., just at the time of the Commune, Marx wrote to
Kugelmann:

'/"If you look up the last chapter of my Eighteenth Brumaire, you will
find that I declare that the next attempt of the French Revolution will
be no longer, as before, to transfer the bureaucratic-military machine
from one hand to another, but to/ smash /it [Marx's italics--the
original is /zerbrechen/], and this is the precondition for every real
people's revolution on the Continent. And this is what our heroic Party
comrades in Paris are attempting."/'

Lenin proceeds:

'Today, [in 1917] in Britain and America, too, "the precondition for
every real people's revolution" is the smashing, the destruction of the
"ready-made state machinery"...

'Secondly, particular attention should be paid to Marx's extremely
profound remark that the destruction of the bureaucratic-military state
machine is "the precondition for every real people's revolution". This
idea of a "people's revolution" seems strange coming from Marx, so that
the Russian Plekhanovites and Mensheviks, those followers of Struve who
wish to be regarded as Marxists, might possibly declare such an
expression to be a "slip of the pen" on Marx's part. They have reduced
Marxism to such a state of wretchedly liberal distortion that nothing
exists for them beyond the antithesis between bourgeois revolution and
proletarian revolution, and even this antithesis they interpret in an
utterly lifeless way.

'If we take the revolutions of the 20th century as examples we shall, of
course, have to admit that the Portuguese and the Turkish revolutions
are both bourgeois revolutions. Neither of them, however, is a
"people's" revolution, since in neither does the mass of the people,
their vast majority, come out actively, independently, with their own
economic and political demands to any noticeable degree. By contrast,
although the Russian bourgeois revolution of 1905-07 displayed no such
"brilliant" successes as at the time fell to the Portuguese and Turkish
revolutions, it was undoubtedly a "real people's" revolution, since the
mass of the people, their majority, the very lowest social groups,
crushed by oppression and exploitation, rose independently and stamped
on the entire course of the revolution the imprint of their own demands,
their attempt to build in their own way a new society in place of the
old society that was being destroyed.

'In Europe, in 1871, the proletariat did not constitute the majority of
the people in any country on the Continent. A "people's" revolution, one
actually sweeping the majority into its stream, could be such only if it
embraced both the proletariat and the peasants. These two classes then
constituted the "people". These two classes are united by the fact that
the "bureaucratic-military state machine" oppresses, crushes, exploits
them. To smash this machine, to break it up, is truly in the interest of
the "people", of their majority, of the workers and most of the
peasants, is "the precondition" for a free alliance of the poor peasant
and the proletarians, whereas without such an alliance democracy is
unstable and socialist transformation is impossible.'

The lessons of the Paris Commune are many. Here are some of Marx's own
words from our chosen chapter:

/"...no sooner do the working men anywhere take the subject
[emancipation of labour] into their own hands with a will, than uprises
at once all the apologetic phraseology of the mouthpieces of present
society with its two poles of capital and wages-slavery (the landlord
now is but the sleeping partner of the capitalist), as if the capitalist
society was still in its purest state of virgin innocence, with its
antagonisms still undeveloped, with its delusions still unexploded, with
its prostitute realities not yet laid bare. The Commune, they exclaim,
intends to abolish property, the basis of all civilization! /
//
/"Yes, gentlemen, the Commune intended to abolish that class property
which makes the labour of the many the wealth of the few. It aimed at
the expropriation of the expropriators. It wanted to make individual
property a truth by transforming the means of production, land, and
capital, now chiefly the means of enslaving and exploiting labour, into
mere instruments of free and associated labour. But this is communism,
"impossible" communism! Why, those member of the ruling classes who are
intelligent enough to perceive the impossibility of continuing the
present system --- and they are many --- have become the obtrusive and
full-mouthed apostles of co-operative production. If co-operative
production is not to remain a sham and a snare; if it is to supersede
the capitalist system; if united co-operative societies are to regulate
national production upon common plan, thus taking it under their own
control, and putting an end to the constant anarchy and periodical
convulsions which are the fatality of capitalist production --- what
else, gentlemen, would it be but communism, "possible" communism?" /

*Factual note:* What had happened in France was that Louis Bonaparte,
the nobody, the returned exile, who juggled the classes and deceived
them all, had made himself an "Emperor". But he ran out of options after
two decades in power. He decided to make a foolish war on the Germans
(Prussians), who beat the French and advanced to Versailles, outside
Paris. The French government then abandoned Paris like cowards; hence
the formation of the self-governing Paris Commune. In Versailles, a
suburb of royal palaces, the Germans for the first time agreed to form a
single German nation, while at the same time licensing and assisting the
treacherous French bourgeoisie to destroy their own compatriots in Paris.

  * *The above is to introduce the original reading-text:**The Civil War
    in France, Chapter 5, The Paris Commune, 1871, Karl Marx
    <https://sites.google.com/site/cu2012courses/16-lenin-s-the-state-and-...>**.***

  * *A PDF file of the reading text is attached*

**

  * *To download any of the CU courses in PDF files please click here
    <https://sites.google.com/site/cu2012courses/>*.**

16062, Marx, The Civil War in France, C5, Paris Commune, 1871.pdf 535K Download