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                                APPENDICES



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                                    I



  "the column of prisoners halted in the Avenue Uhrich, and was drawn

  up, four or five deep, on the footway facing to the road.  General

  Marquis de Gallifet and his staff dismounted and commenced an

  inspection from the left of the line.  Walking down slowly and eyeing

  the ranks, the general stopped here and there, tapping a man on the

  shoulder or beckoning him out of the rear ranks.  In most cases,

  without further parley, the individual thus selected was marched out

  into the centre of the road, where a small supplementary column was

  thus soon formed....  It was evident that there was considerable room

  for error.  A mounted officer pointed out to General Gallifet a man

  and woman for some particular offence.  The women, rushing out of the

  ranks, threw herself on her knees, and, with outstretched arms,

  protested her innocence in passionate terms.  The general waited for a

  pause, and then with most impassible face and unmoved demeanor, said:

  'Madame, I have visited every theatre in Paris, your acting will have

  no effect on me.' (ce n'est pas la peine de jouer la comedie)....  It

  was not a good thing on that day to be noticeably taller, dirtier,

  cleaner, older, uglier than one's neighbors.  One individual in

  particular struck me as probably owing his speedy release from the

  ills of this world to his having a broken nose....  Over a hundred

  being thus chosen, a firing party told off, and the column resumed its

  march, leaving them behind.  A few minutes afterwards a dropping fire

  in our rear commenced, and continued for over a quarter of an hour. 

  It was the execution of the summarily-convicted wretches."



                           -- Paris Correspondent, _Daily_News_, June 8. 



This Gallifet, "the kept man of his wife, so notorious for her shameless

exhibitions at the orgies of the Second Empire", went, during the war,

by the name of the French "Ensign Pistol". 



  "The _Temps_, which is a careful journal, and not given to sensation,

  tells a dreadful story of people imperfectly shot and buried before

  life was extinct.  A great number were buried in the Square round St. 

  Jacques-la-Bouchiere; some of them very superficially.  In the daytime

  the roar of the busy streets prevented any notice being taken; but in

  the stillness of the night the inhabitants of the houses in the

  neighborhood were roused by distant moans, and in the morning a

  clenched hand was seen protruding through the soil.  In consequence of

  this, exhumations were ordered to take place....  that many wounded

  have been buried alive I have not the slightest doubt.  One case I can

  vouch for.  When Brunel was shot with his mistress on the 24th ult. 

  in the courtyard of a house in the place Vendome, the bodies lay there

  until the afternoon of the 27th.  When the burial party came to remove

  the corpses, they found the woman still living, and took her to an

  ambulance.  Though she had received four bullets she is now out of

  danger."



                    -- Paris Correspondent, _Evening_Standard_, June 8. 





                                    II



The following letter appeared in the [London] _Times_, June 13:



     To the editor of the _Times_:



     Sir.  -- On June 6, 1871, M.  Jules Favre [71] issued a circular to

     all the European Powers, calling them to hunt down the

     International Working Men's Association.  A few remarks will

     suffice to characterize that document. 



     In the very preamble to our statutes it is stated that the

     International was found "September 28, 1864, at a public meeting

     held at St. Martin's Hall, Long Acre, London".  For purposes of

     his own Jules Favre puts back the date of its origin behind 1862. 



     In order to explain our principles, he professes to quote "their

     (the International's) sheet of the 25th of March, 1869".  And then

     what does he quote? The sheet of a society which is not the

     International.  This sort of maneuvre he already recurred to when,

     still a comparatively young lawyer, he had to defend the _National_

     newspaper, prosecuted for libel by Cabet.[72] Then he pretended to

     read extracts from Cabet's pamphlets while reading interpolations

     of his own -- a trick exposed while the court was sitting, and

     which, but for the indulgence of Cabet, would have been punished by

     Jules Favre's expulsion for the Paris bar.  Of all the documents

     quoted by him as documents of the International, not one belongs to

     the International.  He says, for instance, "The Alliance declared

     itself Atheist, says the General Council, constituted in London in

     July 1869".  The General Council never issued such a document.  On

     the contrary, it issued a document which quashed the original

     statutes of the 'Alliance' -- L'Alliance de la Democratie

     Socialiste at Geneva -- quoted by Jules favre. 



     Throughout his circular, which pretends in part also to be directed

     against the Empire, Jules Favre repeats against the International

     but the police inventions of the public prosecutors of the Empire,

     which broke down miserably even before the laws courts of that

     Empire. 



     It is known that in its two Addresses (of July and September last)

     on the late war, the General Council of the International denounced

     the Prussian plans of conquest against France.  Later on, Mr. 

     Reitlinger, Jules Favre's private secretary, applied, though of

     course in vain, to some members of the General Council for getting

     up by the Council a demonstration against Bismarck, in favor of the

     Government of National Defence; they were particularly requested

     not to mention the republic.  The preparations for a demonstration

     with regard to the expected arrival of Jules Favre in London were

     made -- certainly with the best of intentions -- in spite of the

     General Council, which, in its address of the 9th of September, had

     distinctly forewarned the Paris workmen against Jules Favre and his

     colleagues. 



     What could Jules Favre say if, in its turn, the International were

     to send a circular on Jules Favre to all the Cabinets of Europe,

     drawing their particular attention to the document published at

     Paris by the late M. Milliere?



     I am, Sir, your obedient servant,



     John Hales, Secretary to the General Council of the International

     Working Men's Association, London, June 12th, 1871. 





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     MARX'S LETTER TO DR KUGELMANN CONCERNING THE PARIS COMMUNE [67]

 

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                                                          April 12, 1871



... If you look at the last chapter of my _Eighteenth Brumaire_ you will

find that I say 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, and this is essential for every

real people's revolution on the Continent.[68] And this is what our

heroic Party comrades in Paris are attempting.  What elasticity, what

historical initiative, what a capacity for sacrifice in these Parisians!

After six months of hunger and ruin, caused rather by internal treachery

than by the external enemy, they rise, beneath Prussian bayonets, as if

there had never been a war between France and Germany and the enemy were

not at the gates of Paris.  History has no like example of a like

greatness.  If they are defeated only their "good nature" will be to

blame.  They should have marched at once on Versailles, after first

Vinoy and then the reactionary section of the Paris National Guard had

themselves retreated.  The right moment was missed because of

conscientious scruples.  They did not want to _start the civil war_, as

if that mischievous _abortion_ Thiers had not already started the civil

war with his attempt to disarm Paris.  Second mistake: The Central

Committee surrendered its power too soon, to make way for the Commune. 

Again from a too "honorable" scrupulosity! [69] However that may be, the

present rising in Paris -- even if it be crushed by the wolves, swine

and vile curs of the old society -- is the most glorious deed of our

Party since the June insurrection in Paris.  Compare these Parisians,

storming heaven, with the slave to heaven of the German-Prussian Holy

Roman Empire, with it posthumous masquerades reeking of the barracks,

the Church, cabbage-_junkerdom_ and above all, of the philistine. 



A propos.  In the official publication of the list of those receiving

direct subsidies from Louis Bonaparte's treasury there is a note that

Vogt received 40,000 francs in August 1859.  I have informed Liebknecht

of the _fait_, for further use. 



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                                               [London] April 17, 1871



... How you can compare petty-bourgeois demonstrations a la 13 June,

1849, [70], etc., with the present struggle in Paris is quite

incomprehensible to me. 



World history would indeed be very easy to make, if the struggle were

taken up only on condition of infallibly favorable chances.  It would,

on the other hand, be a very mystical nature, if "accidents" played no

part.  These accidents themselves fall naturally into the general course

of development and are compensated again by other accidents.  But

acceleration and delay are very dependent upon such "accidents", which

included the "accident" of the character of those who at first stand at

the head of the movement. 



The decisive, unfavorable "accident" this time is by no means to be

found in the general conditions of French society, but in the presence

of the Prussians in France and their position right before Paris.  Of

this the Parisians were well aware.  But of this, the bourgeois

_canaille_ of Versailles were also well aware.  Precisely for that

reason they presented the Parisians with the alternative of taking up

the fight of succumbing without a struggle.  In the latter case, the

demoralization of the working class against the capitalist class and its

state has entered upon a new phase with the struggle in paris.  Whatever

the immediate results may be, a new point of departure of world-historic

importance has been gained. 





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      LENIN'S EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION TO THE 1907 FIRST EDITION OF

                      _LETTERS_TO_DR._KUGELMANN_



              (collection of Marx's letters to Kugelmann)



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Marx's assessment of the the Commune crowns the letters to Kugelmann. 

And this assessment is particularly valuable when compared with the

methods of the Russian Right-wing Social-Democrats.  Plekhanov, who

after December 1905 faint-heartedly exclaimed: "They should not have

taken up arms", had the modesty to compare himself to Marx.  Marx, he

says, also put the brakes on the revolution in 1870. 



Yes, Marx _also_ put the brakes on the revolution.  But see what a gulf

lies between Plekhanov and Marx, in Plekhanov's own comparison!



In November 1905, a month before the first revolutionary wave in Russia

had reached its climax, Plekhanov, far from emphatically warning the

proletariat, spoke directly of the necessity _to learn to use arms and

to arm_.  Yet, when the struggle flared up a month later, Plekhanov,

without making the slightest attempt to analyze its significance, its

role in the general course of events and its connection with previous

forms of struggle, hastened to play the part of a penitent intellectual

and exclaimed: "They should not have taken up arms."



In September 1870, six months before the Commune, Marx gave a direct

warning to the French workers: insurrection would be an act of desperate

folly, he said in the well-known Address of the International.  He

exposed in advance the nationalistic illusions of the possibility of a

movement in the spirit of 1792.  He was able to say, not after the

event, but many months before: "Don't take up arms."



And how did he behave when this hopeless cause, as he himself had called

it in September, began to take practical shape in March 1871? Did he use

it (as Plekhanov did the December events) to "take a dig" at his

enemies, the Proudhonists and Blanquists who were leading the Commune?

Did he begin to scold like a school-mistress and say: "I told you so, I

warned you; this is what comes of your romanticism, your revolutionary

ravings?" Did he preach to the Communards, as Plekhanov did to the

December fighters, the sermon of the smug philistine: "You should not

have taken up arms?"



No.  On April 12, 1871, Marx writes an enthusiastic letter to Kugelmann

[see above] -- a letter which we would like to see hung in the home of

every Russian Social-Democrat and of every literate Russian worker. 



In September 1870 Marx had called the insurrection an act of desperate

folly; but in April 1871, when he saw the mass movement of the people he

watched it with the keen attention of a participant in great events

marking a step forward in the historic revolutionary movement. 



This is an attempt, he says, to smash the bureaucratic military machine,

and not simply to transfer it to different hands.  And he has words of

the highest praise for the "heroic" Paris workers led by the

Proudhonists and Blanquists.  "What elasticity," he writes, "what

historical initiative, what a capacity for sacrifice in these Parisians!

[...] history has no example of a like greatness."



The historical initiative of the masses was what Marx prized above

everything else.  Ah, if only our Russian Social-Democrats would learn

from Marx how to appreciate the historical initiative of the Russian

workers and peasants in October and December 1905!



Compare the homage paid to the historical initiative of the masses by a

profound thinker, who foresaw failure sex months ahead -- and the

lifeless, soulless pedantic: "they should not have taken up arms"! Are

these not as far apart as heaven and earth?



And like a participant in the mass struggle, to which he reacted with

all his characteristic ardor and passion, Marx, then living in exile in

London, set to work to criticize the immediate steps of the "recklessly

brave" Parisians who were "ready to storm heaven". 



Ah, how our present "realist" wiseacres among the Marxists, who in

1906-07 are deriding revolutionary romanticism in Russia, would have

sneered at Marx at the time! How people would have scoffed at a

materialist, an economist, an enemy of utopias, who pays homage to an

"attempt" to storm heaven! What tears, condescending smiles or

commiseration these "men in mufflers" [referring to a Chekov story, a

character who fears all initiative] would have bestowed upon him for his

rebel tendencies, utopianism, etc., etc., and for his appreciation of a

heaven-storming movement!



But Marx was not inspired with the wisdom of the small fry who are

afraid to discuss the technique of the higher forms of revolutionary

struggle.  It is precisely the technical problems of the insurrection

that he discussed.  Defence or attack, he asked, as if the military

operation were just outside London.  And he decided that it must

certainly be attack: "They should have marched at once on

Versailles...."



This was written in April 1871, a few weeks before the great and bloody

May.... 



"They should have marched at once on Versailles" -- the insurgents

should, those who had begun the "act of desperate folly" (September

1870) of storming heaven. 



They should not have taken up arms" in December 1905 in order to oppose

by force the first attempts to take away the liberties that had been

won.... 



Yes, Plekhanov had good reason to compare himself to Marx!



"Second mistake," Marx said, continuing his technical criticism: "The

Central Committee (the military command -- note this -- the reference is

to the Central Committee to the National Guard) "surrendered its power

too soon...."



Marx knew how to warn the leaders against a premature rising.  But his

attitude towards the heaven-storming proletariat was that of a practical

adviser, of a participant in the struggle of the masses, who were

raising the whole movement to a higher level in spite of the false

theories and mistakes of Blanqui and Proudhon. 



"However that may be," he wrote, "the present rising in Paris -- even if

it be crushed by the wolves, swine, and vile curs of the old society --

is the most glorious deed of our Party since the June insurrection...."



And, without concealing from the proletariat a single mistake of the

Commune, Marx dedicated to this heroic deed a work which to this very

day serves as the best guide in the fight for "heaven" and as a

frightful bugbear to the liberal and radical "swine". 



Plekhanov dedicated to the December events a "work" which has become

practically the bible of the Cadets. 



Yes, Plekhanov had good reason to compare himself to Marx. 



Kugelmann apparently replied to Marx expressing certain doubts,

referring to the hopelessness of the struggle and to realism as opposed

to romanticism -- at any rate, he compared the Commune, an insurrection,

to the peaceful demonstration in Paris on June 13, 1849. 



Marx immediately (April 17, 1871) severely lectured Kugelmann. 



"World history," he wrote, "would indeed be very easy to make if the

struggle were taken up only on condition of infallibly favorable

chances."



In September 1870, Marx called the insurrection an act of desperate

folly.  But, when the masses rose, Marx wanted to march with them, to

learn with them in the process of the struggle, and not to give them

bureaucratic admonitions.  He realized that to attempt in advance to

calculate the chances with complete accuracy would be quackery or

hopeless pedantry.  What he valued above everything else was that the

working class heroically and self-sacrificingly took the initiative in

making world history.  Marx regarded world history from the standpoint

of those who make it without being in a position to calculate the

chances infallibly beforehand, and not from the standpoint of an

intellectual philistine who moralises: "It was easy to foresee...  they

should not have taken up...."



Marx was also able to appreciate that there are moments in history when

a desperate struggle of the masses, even for a hopeless cause, is

essential for the further schooling of these masses and their training

for the next struggle. 



Such a statement of the question is quite incomprehensible and even

alien in principle to our present-day quasi-marxists, who like to take

the name of Marx in vain, to borrow only his estimate of the past, and

not his ability to make the future.  Plekhanov did not even think of it

when he set out after December 1905 "to put the brakes on". 



But it is precisely this question that Marx raised, without in the least

forgetting that he himself in September 1870 regarded insurrection as an

act of desperate folly. 



"...The bourgeoisie canaille of Versailles," he wrote, " ...presented to

the Parisians with the alternative of taking up the fight or succumbing

without a struggle.  In the latter case, the demoralization of the

working class would have been a far greater misfortune than the fall of

any number of 'leaders'."



And with this we shall conclude our brief review of the lessons in a

policy worthy of the proletariat which Marx teaches in his letters to

Kugelmann. 



The working class of Russia has already proven once, and will prove

again more than once, that it is capable of "storming heaven". 





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