The Civil War in France
Author | Karl Marx |
---|---|
Subject | Paris Commune |
Publication date | June 12, 1871 |
Pages | 35 |
"The Civil War in France" (
Writing
Between the middle of April and the end of May 1871,
Marx originally intended to write an address to the workers of Paris and made such a motion to the meeting of the governing General Council of the International on March 28, 1871, a proposal unanimously approved.[2] Further developments in France made Marx think that the document should be instead directed to the working class of the world, and at the April 18 meeting of the General Council, he passed along that suggestion by noting his desire to write on the "general tendency of the struggle." The proposal was approved, and Marx began writing the document.[2] Main writing on the publication seems to have taken place between May 6 and May 30, 1871,[3] with Marx writing the original document in English.
Publication
The first edition of the pamphlet, a slim document of just 35 pages, was published in London on about June 13, 1871 as "The Civil War in France: Address of the General Council of the International Working-Men's Association." Only 1000 copies of the first edition were printed, and the pamphlet quickly sold out, to be followed by a less expensive second edition with a print run of 2000. A third English edition, containing a number of corrections of errors, appeared later in that same year.[3] The pamphlet was translated into French, German, Russian, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Flemish, Croatian, Danish, and Polish and published both in newspapers and in pamphlet form in various countries in 1871 and 1872 .[3] The German translation was rendered by Marx's longtime associate, Friedrich Engels, and the first German publication was serialized in the newspaper Der Volkstaat in June–July 1871 followed by Der Vorbote in August–October 1871.[3] A separate pamphlet edition was also published by the Volkstaat in Leipzig in that same year.[4]
On the fifth anniversary of the fall of the Paris Commune, the German edition of the pamphlet was reissued, with Engels making certain minor corrections to the translation. The second edition was also published in Leipzig by Genossenschaftsbuchdruckerei.[5]
In 1891, on the 20th anniversary of the Paris Commune, Engels put together a new edition of the work. He wrote an introduction emphasising the historical significance of the experience of the Paris Commune, its theoretical generalization by Marx in "The Civil War in France" and providing additional information on the activities of the Communards from among the
Theoretical consequences
For Marx, the history of the Paris Commune caused him to reassess the significance of some of his own earlier writings. In a later preface to the
References
- ^ The scrapbooks compiled by Marx are still extant, housed in archives in Moscow that formerly held by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism. Tatyana Yeremeyeva and Valeriya Kunina (eds.), Karl Marx — Frederick Engels: Collected Works, Volume 22. New York: International Publishers, 1986; pg. 664. Hereafter: MECW.
- ^ a b c MECW, v. 22, pg. 665.
- ^ a b c d e MECW, v. 22, pg. 666.
- ^ Hal Draper, The Marx-Engels Register: A Complete Bibliography of Marx and Engels' Individual Writings. Volume II of the Marx-Engels Cyclopedia. New York: Schocken Books, 1985; pg. 187.
- ^ Draper, Marx-Engels Register, v. 2, pg. 187.
- ^ a b Karl Marx and Frederich Engels, Communist Manifesto (Preface) http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/preface.htm
- ^ a b Vladimir Lenin, State and Revolution https://www.marxists.org/ebooks/lenin/state-and-revolution.pdf
External links
- "The Civil War in France" – Full text in HTML format from Marxists Internet Archive
- Scan of Third Revised Edition of The Civil War in France (1871) in HathiTrust Digital Library
- Preface to the 1872 publication of The Communist Manifesto
- A Soviet study pamphlet