Karl Marx: The Civil War in France

The First Address[1]

July 23, 1870

[The Beginning of the Franco-Prussian War]

In the Inaugural Address of the International Working Men’s
Association, of November 1864, we said:

“If the emancipation of the working classes requires
their fraternal concurrence, how are they to fulfill 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 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[A] he
ordered a raid on the members of the Administrative Committee of the
International Working Men’s Association 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. It has been, in fact, their work that in
all the great towns, in all the industrial centres 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 [19] 1870[B] is but an amended edition of the coup
d’etat 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 15, war was at last officially announced to the Corps
Legislatif, 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 Reveil of July 12, 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 in Germany! Our division would only result
in the complete triumph of the 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
Working Men’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, or 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 [i.e., to appear as common workers] and let loose on
the streets of Paris, there to perform the contortions of war fever, the real
workmen of the Faubourgs [suburbs, workers’
districts] came forward with public peace demonstrations so
overwhelming that Pietri, the Prefect of Police, thought it prudent to stop
at once all further street politics, on the plea that the real Paris people
had given sufficient vent to their pent-up patriotism and exuberant war
enthusiasm.

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 18 years the ferocious farce of the Restored Empire.

On the German side, the war is a war of defence; 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
super-added 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 regime, 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 allows the present war to lose its strictly
defensive character and to degenerate into a war against the French people,
victory of defeat will prove alike disastrous. All the miseries that befell
Germany after her wars 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 had re-echoed from Germany. A
mass meeting of workmen, held at Brunswick on July 16, 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 the 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 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 Working Men’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
trumpets, 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 strike 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 Prut.[C] 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 tsar.

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 goodwill; 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 economical
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 – Labour! The pioneer of that new society is the
International Working Men’s Association.

Chapter 2: [Prussian Occupation of
France]