commie kg
12th January 2004, 19:38
I am referring to the address Marx gave after the Paris Commune (called "The Civil War in France"), where it seemed that Marx set aside some of the more authoritarian values seen in certain places in the manifesto, and replaced them with more libertarian ones. I recently read an essay by Daniel Guerin dealing with the subject. Here are some of the more interesting parts of the essay:
Goaded by Bakunin's criticisms, Marx and Engels felt the need to correct the overly statist ideas they had held in 1848. In a preface to a new edition of the Manifesto, dated 24 June 1872, they agreed that 'in many respects' they would give a 'different wording' to the passage in question of the 1848 text. They claimed support for this revision in (among others) "the practical experience gained first in the February Revolution (1848), and then, still more, in the Paris Commune, where the proletariat for the first time held political power for two whole months." They concluded that "This programme has in some details become antiquated. "One thing especially was proved by the Commune, viz., that the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made State machinery and wield it for its own purposes." And the 1871 Address proclaimes that the Commune is "the final discovery of the political form by which the economic emancipation of labour may be created."
...But later, after the death of Marx, Lehning assures us that Engles, struggling with Anarchist currents, had to drop this corrective and go back to the old ideas of the Manifesto.
...Bakunin also observed: "It would appear that Engels, at the Hague Congress (Sept. 1872) was afraid of the terrible impression created by some pages of the Manifesto, and eagerly declared that this was an outdated document, whose ideas they (Marx & Engels) had personally abandoned. If he did say this, then he was lying, for just before the Congress the Marxists had been doing their best to spread this document into every country."
Full text here. (http://flag.blackened.net/liberty/libmarx.html)
Goaded by Bakunin's criticisms, Marx and Engels felt the need to correct the overly statist ideas they had held in 1848. In a preface to a new edition of the Manifesto, dated 24 June 1872, they agreed that 'in many respects' they would give a 'different wording' to the passage in question of the 1848 text. They claimed support for this revision in (among others) "the practical experience gained first in the February Revolution (1848), and then, still more, in the Paris Commune, where the proletariat for the first time held political power for two whole months." They concluded that "This programme has in some details become antiquated. "One thing especially was proved by the Commune, viz., that the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made State machinery and wield it for its own purposes." And the 1871 Address proclaimes that the Commune is "the final discovery of the political form by which the economic emancipation of labour may be created."
...But later, after the death of Marx, Lehning assures us that Engles, struggling with Anarchist currents, had to drop this corrective and go back to the old ideas of the Manifesto.
...Bakunin also observed: "It would appear that Engels, at the Hague Congress (Sept. 1872) was afraid of the terrible impression created by some pages of the Manifesto, and eagerly declared that this was an outdated document, whose ideas they (Marx & Engels) had personally abandoned. If he did say this, then he was lying, for just before the Congress the Marxists had been doing their best to spread this document into every country."
Full text here. (http://flag.blackened.net/liberty/libmarx.html)