Twenty-one years ago today the people of Paris raised the red 
flag, in defiance of both the French tricolour flying at Versailles 
and the German tricolour flying over the forts occupied by the 
Prussians. 

The red flag was the Paris proletariat rising to a height from 
which conquerors and conquered alike disappeared. 

What constitutes the historic grandeur of the Commune is its 
eminently international character. It is the bold challenge which it 
made to every sentiment of bourgeois chauvinism. The proletariat 
of all countries was not mistaken. Let the bourgeois celebrate their 
July 14 or their September 22.74” The holiday of the proletariat, 
everywhere and always, will be March 18. 

Hence the vile slanders which the vile bourgeoisie has heaped 
on the tomb of the Commune. But hence, also, the International 
Association of Working Men, which alone dared to identify itself 
from the very first day with the Paris insurgents and, until the last 
day and thereafter, with the defeated proletarians. It is true that 
where the Commune succumbed, the International was not able to 
survive: to the cry of “At the Communards!” it was smashed from 
one end of Europe to the other. 

Well! Twenty-one years have passed since the recapture of the 
cannons on the hill of Monmartre.* The children born in 1871 
have now reached their majority, and thanks to the stupidity of 
the ruling classes they are soldiers, learning to handle arms, the art 

a See this volume, p. 184.— Ed. 

of organising themselves and defending themselves, gun in hand. 
The Commune which they claimed to have killed, the Internation- 
al which they imagined they had wiped out forever, are here in 
our midst, alive and twenty times more powerful than in 1871. 
Those responding to our call have grown from hundreds into 
thousands, and from thousands into millions. The union of the 
world proletariat, which the First International was able to predict 
and prepare, is today a reality. And, what is more, the sons of the 
Prussian soldiers who occupied the forts surrounding the Paris of 
the Commune in 1871 are today fighting in their millions in the 
front line, side by side with the sons of the Communards, for the 
complete and lasting liberation of the working class. 

Long live the Commune! 

Long live the International Social Revolution! 

Fred. Engels 

March 26, 1892 paper, checked with the rough 
manuscript 

Translated from the French