The Paris Commune/First Manifesto
THE INTERNATIONAL WORKINGMEN'S ASSOCIATION
ON THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR
THE DECLARATION OF WAR
FIRST MANIFESTO OF THE GENERAL COUNCIL
Issued on July 23, 1870, and addressed to the Members
of the Association in Europe and
the United States
THE
INTERNATIONAL WORKINGMEN'S ASSOCIATION
ON THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR
THE DECLARATION OF WAR
FIRST MANIFESTO OF THE GENERAL COUNCIL
In the inaugural address of the International Workingmen's Association, of November, 1864, we said: "If the emancipation of the working classes requires their fraternal concurrence, how are they to fulfil that great mission with a foreign policy in pursuit of criminal designs, playing upon national prejudices and squandering in piratical wars the people's blood and treasure?" We defined the foreign policy aimed at by the International in these words: "Vindicate the simple laws of morals and justice, which ought to govern the relations of private individuals, as the laws paramount of the intercourse of nations."
No wonder that Louis Bonaparte, who usurped his power by exploiting the war of classes in France, and perpetuated it by periodical wars abroad, should from the first have treated the International as a dangerous foe. On the eve of the plebiscite[1] he ordered a raid on the members of the administrative committees of the International Workingmen's Association's throughout France, at Paris, Lyons, Rouen, Marseilles, Brest, etc., on the pretext that the International was a secret society dabbling in a complot for his assassination, a pretext soon after exposed in its full absurdity by his own judges. What was the real crime of the French branches of the International? They told the French people publicly and emphatically that voting the plebiscite was voting despotism at home and war abroad.[2] It has been, in fact, their work that in all the great towns, in all the industrial centers of France, the working class rose like one man to reject the plebiscite. Unfortunately the balance was turned by the heavy ignorance of the rural districts. The stock exchanges, the cabinets, the ruling classes and the press of Europe celebrated the plebiscite as a signal victory of the French Emperor over the French working class; and it was the signal for the assassination, not of an individual, but of nations.
The war plot of July, 1870, is but an amended edition of the coup d'état of December, 1851. At first view, the thing seemed so absurd that France would not believe in its real good earnest. It rather believed the deputy denouncing the ministerial war talk as a mere stock-jobbing trick. When, on July 15th, war was at last officially announced to the Corps Législatif, the whole Opposition refused to vote the preliminary subsidies—even Thiers branded it as "detestable"; all the independent journals of Paris condemned it, and, wonderful to relate, the provincial press joined in almost unanimously.
Meanwhile, the Paris members of the International had again set to work. In the Réveil of July 12th, they published their manifesto "to the Workmen of all Nations," from which we extract the following few passages:
"Once more," they say, on the pretext of European equilibrium, of national honor, the peace of the world is menaced by political ambitions. French, German, Spanish Workmen! let our voices unite in one cry of reprobation against war! … War for a question of preponderance or a dynasty, can, in the eyes of workmen, be nothing but a criminal absurdity. In answer to the warlike proclamations of those who exempt themselves from the blood-tax, and find in public misfortunes a source of fresh speculations, we protest, we who want peace, labor, and liberty! … Brothers of Germany! Our division would only result in the complete triumph of despotism on both sides of the Rhine. … Workmen of all countries! Whatever may for the present become of our common efforts, we, the members of the International Workingmen's Association, who know of no frontiers, we send you, as a pledge of indissoluble solidarity, the good wishes and the salutations of the workmen of France."
This manifesto of our Paris section was followed by numerous similar French addresses, of which we can here only quote the declaration of Neuilly-sur-Seine, published in the Marseillaise of July 22: "The war, is it just? No! The war, is it national? No! It is merely Dynastic. In the name of humanity, of democracy, and the true interests of France, we adhere completely and energetically to the protestation of the International against the war."
These protestations expressed the true sentiments of the French working people, as was soon shown by a curious incident. The band of the 10th of December, first organized under the presidency of Louis Bonaparte, having been masqueraded into blouses and let loose on the streets of Paris, there to perform the contortions of war fever, the real workmen of the faubourgs came forward with public peace demonstrations so overwhelming that Pietri, the Prefect of Police, thought it prudent to at once stop all further street politics, on the plea that the feal Paris people had given sufficient vent to their pent-up patriotism and exuberant war enthusiasm.[3]
Whatever may be the incidents of Louis Bonaparte's war with Prussia, the death-knell of the Second Empire has already sounded at Paris. It will end, as it began, by a parody. But let us not forget that it is the Governments and the ruling classes of Europe who enabled Louis Bonaparte to play during eighteen years the ferocious farce of the Restored Empire.
On the German side, the war is a war of defense; but who put Germany to the necessity of defending herself? Who enabled Louis Bonaparte to wage war upon her? Prussia! It was Bismarck who conspired with that very same Louis Bonaparte for the purpose of crushing popular opposition at home, and annexing Germany to the Hohenzollern dynasty. If the battle of Sadowa had been lost instead of being won, French battalions would have overrun Germany as the allies of Prussia. After her victory did Prussia dream one moment of opposing a free Germany to an enslaved France? Just the contrary. While carefully preserving all the native beauties of her old system, she superadded all the tricks of the Second Empire, its real despotism and its mock democratism, its political shams and its financial jobs, its high-flown talk and its low legerdemains. The Bonapartist régime, which till then only flourished on one side of the Rhine, had now got its counterfeit on the other. From such a state of things, what else could result but war?
If the German working class allow the present war to lose its strictly defensive character and to degenerate into a war against the French people, victory or defeat will prove alike disastrous. All the miseries that befell Germany after her war of independence will revive with accumulated intensity.
The principles of the International are, however, too widely spread and too firmly rooted amongst the German working class to apprehend such a sad consummation. The voices of the French workmen have reëchoed from Germany. A mass meeting of workmen, held at Brunswick on July 16th, expressed its full concurrence with the Paris manifesto, spurned the idea of national antagonism to France, and wound up its resolutions with these words: "We are enemies of all wars, but above all of dynastic wars. … With deep sorrow and grief we are forced to undergo a defensive war as an unavoidable evil; but we call, at the same time, upon the whole German working class to render the recurrence of such an immense social misfortune impossible by vindicating for the peoples themselves the power to decide on peace and war, and making them masters of their own destinies."
At Chemnitz, a meeting of delegates, representing 50,000 Saxon workmen, adopted unanimously a resolution to this effect: "In the name of the German democracy, and especially of the workmen forming the Democratic Socialist party, we declare the present war to be exclusively dynastic. …. We are happy to grasp the fraternal hand stretched out to us by the workmen of France. … Mindful of the watchword of the International Workingmen's Association: Proletarians of all countries unite, we shall never forget that the workmen of all countries are our friends and the despots of all countries our enemies."
The Berlin branch of the International has also replied to the Paris manifesto: "We," they say, "join with heart and hand your protestation. … Solemnly we promise that neither the sound of the trumpet, nor the roar of the cannon, neither victory nor defeat, shall divert us from our common work for the union of the children of toil of all countries."
Be it so!
In the background of this suicidal strife looms the dark figure of Russia. It is an ominous sign that the signal for the present war should have been given at the moment when the Moscovite Government had just finished its strategic lines of railway and was already massing troops in the direction of the Pruth. Whatever sympathy the Germans may justly claim in a war of defense against Bonapartist aggression, they would forfeit at once by allowing the Prussian Government to call for, or accept the help of, the Cossack. Let them remember that, after their war of independence against the First Napoleon, Germany lay for generations prostrate at the feet of the Czar.
The English working class stretch the hand of fellowship to the French and German working people. They feel deeply convinced that whatever turn the impending horrid war may take, the alliance of the working classes of all countries will ultimately kill war. The very fact that while official France and Germany are rushing into a fratricidal feud, the workmen of France and Germany send each other messages of peace and good will; this great fact, unparalleled in the history of the past, opens the vista of a brighter future. It proves that in contrast to old society, with its economic miseries, and its political delirium, a new society is springing up, whose international rule will be Peace, because its national ruler will be everywhere the same—Labor! The Pioneer of that new society is the International Workingmen's Association.
London, July 23, 1870.
- ↑ For several years before the Franco-Prussian war and the resulting fall of the Second Empire, the dissatisfaction of the bourgeoisie with the foreign and domestic policy of Louis Bonaparte had been steadily increasing, while the discontent of the workingmen was frequently manifesting itself in a way suggestive of impending revolution. He could not, of course, make a public admission of his growing unpopularity; but, fully realizing that unless he made "timely concessions" his rule would soon be imperilled, he concluded to act, mountebank-like, the part of a generous and liberal monarch. The French people, he said, rendered happy and wise under his reign, were at last fitted for greater freedom. He had, therefore, resolved to submit to a plebiscite—that is, to a general vote—such parliamentary reforms as he deemed adapted to the character and circumstances of the nation. This plebiscite, which was also intended to firmly establish his dynasty on the throne of France, took place in the midst of considerable excitement, heightened by its fraudulent manipulation. Some time before, in wild fear of the International, he had caused sixty of its leading agitators to be arrested. But this act of despotism further inflamed the urban proletariat against him. In its vote on the plebiscite he could read his doom. Terror-stricken at the prospect of a revolution, he evoked the god of patriotism and declared war to Prussia. Johnson had the like of him in his mind's eye when he said that patriotism was the last resort of a scoundrel.—Note to the American Edition.
- ↑ How the plebiscite was regarded by the French branches of the International is clearly set forth in the "Anti-Plebiscite Manifesto" issued jointly by the Paris Sections of that body and the Federal Chamber of Labor Societies. (See Appendix, page 107.) The historic importance of this document may not fully appear, however, until it is contrasted with another anti-plebiscite manifesto, issued at the same time by Leon Gambetta, Emmanuel Arago, Jules Ferry, Jules Simon, and other political mouthpieces of the dissatisfied fraction of the French bourgeoisie. These bourgeois "republicans" were, not less than Louis Bonaparte himself, apprehensive of the socialist movement, which men of their own kind and class had murderously stifled in 1848, but which the International was at last reviving despite all imperial obstacles and persecutions. In fact, they held the "personal government of the Emperor" responsible for that revival, and they appealed "to the people" in the name of "social peace and order, which could only be secured by conciliating the interests and the classes."
On the other hand, the Internationalists and their sympathizers in the labor societies had sufficiently learned the true meaning of the bourgeois expression "conciliation of the classes" to be no longer bamboozled by such logomachy; and they could see no greater virtue in the impersonal government of a "peace-loving" bourgeoisie than in the personal government of a military despot. In other words, they understood the nature of the class struggle; hence the class character of their manifesto, which was obviously intended, not for "the people," so called in bourgeois parlance, but for the working people, "who alone are entitled to the esteem of their fellow citizens," and whose mission, as a body, "is to regenerate the world." Furthermore, it will be observed that while they made specific reference to a few only of the grievances and demands of the proletariat, they tersely summed up their whole programme in one brief and bold declaration, namely, that "the Socialist Republic is the only form of government through which the legitimate aspirations of the working class can be realized."
Here, then, were two antagonistic classes, irreconcilable enemies, each working separately and in its own way for the downfall of Louis Bonaparte; one with a view to the establishment of a bourgeois republic (or, this failing, of a bourgeois parliamentary republic); the other looking to the initiation of the Socialist Republic. The lines were tightly drawn, and upon the fall of Bonaparte a great class conflict was inevitable.—Note to the American Edition.
- ↑ Louis Bonaparte, nephew of Napoleon I., was elected President of the Republic in 1849. On December 2, 1851, he made his infamous coup d'état, preparatory to his assumption of imperial power. With this supreme end in view his police then organized "the band of the 10th of December," which was recruited from the dregs in all ranks of society. The special work of these vile mercenaries, paid and later pensioned from the "secret funds," was to shout "Vive l'Empereur!" on the President's passage through the streets of Paris and on his travels throughout France, besides acting as spies and agents provocateurs, especially among the working people. As the press of the opposition had been suspended or muzzled, the demonstrations of the Décembriseurs were heralded everywhere by the subsidized papers as bona fide manifestations of popular enthusiasm for Louis Bonaparte, and of an irresistible desire in all classes for an imperial form of government. At the time here referred to by Marx, the Empire was already tottering, and the retired Décembriseurs had been called back on active duty. (See The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, by Karl Marx, translated by Daniel De Leon.)—Note to the American Edition.