Karl Marx: Man and Fighter Boris Nicolaievsky and Otto Maenchen-Helfen

Chapter 19: The Franco-Prussian War

In the year of the foundation of the International Prussia and Austria were at war with Denmark. Two years later there was war in Lombardy for the unification of Italy and in Bohemia for the hegemony of Germany. After 1866 war -- revanche pour Sadowa -- had become inevitable between the France of Louis Napoleon and Bismarck's Prussia. The International, from the first day of its existence, had had to take a stand towards war and foreign politics. The inaugural address had proclaimed the necessity of the proletariat's having its own foreign policy, based on the solidarity of the workers of all countries. The workers' International must answer ruling-class policy with its own. This principle was accepted as a matter of course by all groups within the International, even those of the most divergent views. But as soon as it came to putting principle into practice acute differences arose.

The Polish question was the first. Sympathy for the fate of the unfortunate people of Poland was universal among revolutionaries and mere radicals too, and this widespread feeling had contributed substantially to the foundation of the International. The International had helped to organise the meeting of July 22, 1863, summoned to consider ways and means of assisting the Polish rising. Poland enjoyed the sympathy of all. But there were not a few who shrank from the inevitable political implications of a more or less sentimental mood. Marx's phrases about Russia in the inaugural address had roused a good deal of opposition, for he maintained, just as in 1848, that Russia was still the mainstay of European reaction and that Russia must therefore be vanquished first. Marx was pro-Polish because he was anti-Russian. Poland's resuscitation would involve the break-up of the 'Holy Alliance,' which was always re-arising from its ashes in spite of the celebrations over its decease, and the end of the Russian nightmare which lay oppressively over Europe, stifling every revolutionary movement.

There were many in Germany and still more in England who thought as Marx did. In the Latin countries it was otherwise. The Proudhonists were the chief of those who repudiated Marx's 'Russophobia.' They did not deny that it had been justified in the forties, but they claimed that it was superfluous, actually harmful now. They held that however obnoxious Russian despotism might be in principle, from the working-class point of view it differed not at all from the governments of Napoleon III or Bismarck or even of the Cabinet of Her Majesty Queen Victoria. All were bourgeois governments alike. The Proudhonists declined to recognise the alleged excessive influence of Russia on the destiny of Europe. They rejected the notion of directing the whole weight of International policy primarily against Russia, and at the Geneva Congress of 1866 declined to vote for a foreign policy resolution demanding the 'annihilation of Russia's despotic influence on Europe' on the ground that the resolution should have been worded 'the annihilation of all despotism.'

In the dispute between Marx and the Proudhonists concerning the attitude to be adopted towards Russia and Poland the differences in their estimates of the historical period through which Europe was passing and the tasks that confronted the International in it emerged for the first time. They were soon to assume a more manifest form.

During the revolutionary period of 1848 and 1849 in Central Europe the demand for national unity had been intimately associated with the demand for political freedom. It was an axiom at that time that the way to national unity lay only through the overthrow of the princes. Only freedom created unity and only in unity was there freedom. This article of faith was adhered to even by the German bourgeois Democrats, though their consciences were mightily plagued by their inherited petty-bourgeois respect for every crowned head; and it remained part of the creed of the Italian Democrats. But the wars of the sixties seemed to confute it utterly. For Italy was not united by Mazzini but by Cavour, a royal minister of state, and the German people were not united by themselves, but by Bismarck, with blood and iron, under the spiked Prussian helmet.

To the Proudhonists national movements were simply incomprehensible, and nations themselves were 'obsolete prejudices.' They could not understand how 'the social question' could be mixed up with antiquated 'superstitious ideas' about national unity and independence at a time when 'the social question' overshadowed everything else, and was indeed the only question that mattered at all. In their eyes anyone who connected 'the national question' with 'the social question' was a reactionary. That a man like Bismarck was able to assume the leadership of a national movement only confirmed them in their entirely negative judgment of what they regarded as belonging to long-obsolete historical phases. In their eyes every single state, without any exception whatever, was founded on 'centralism and despotism,' the contradictions of which, as long as the world had not found its 'economic equilibrium,' would continue to be fought out in wars. In these ever-recurring conflicts they did not regard it as the business of the proletariat to try and find out which side was objectively serving the cause of human progress, and then to support that side. No, the proletariat had only one duty. This, as de Paepe stated at the International Congress of 1868, consisted in the fundamental reconstruction of social and political institutions; because that was the only way a permanent end could be made of ever-recurring international disputes. The Proudhonists stood for energetic anti-military propaganda, demanded the abolition of standing armies and were the first to raise the question of the general strike as the weapon of the proletariat against war.

For these radical-sounding phrases Marx had little use. Ever since 1848 he had been preaching war with Russia, for he believed such a war would be a most powerful engine of the revolution. As in the past, he regarded war as a factor in historical growth and in some circumstances a factor of historical advance. Whether a particular war were really the latter or not and what attitude the proletariat should adopt towards it were questions to be decided on the merits of the particular case. In foreign just as in domestic politics Marx rejected the idea of anything being in itself 'reactionary.' Which of two warring nations gained the victory could not possibly be a matter of complete indifference to the proletarian movement, the attitude of which should not be one of rigid adherence to a comfortable position of apparent extreme radicalism, but should be supple and pliant, ready to change in accordance with the changing situation.

In spite of Proudhonist criticism Marx remained convinced, as he had been in 1848, that national movements had a progressive function, at any rate among great peoples such as the Germans, the Italians, the Poles, and the Hungarians. In a letter to Karl Kautsky written many years later Engels neatly summarised the reasons for Marx's belief. 'It is historically impossible for a great people to be in a position even to discuss any internal question seriously as long as national independence is lacking,' he wrote. 'An international movement of the proletariat is only possible among independent nations, between equals.' In this national nihilism of the Proudhonists Marx discerned not only a remarkable form of French nationalism but the lurking assumption that the French were the chosen nation.

After a meeting of the General Council in June, 1866, at which there was a lengthy discussion of national questions, Marx described their attitude in a letter to Engels as 'Proudhonised Stirnerianism. They want to reduce everything to small "groups" or "communes," and then build up a "union" but no state. And this "individualising," of humanity with its accompanying "mutualism," is to be brought about while history in other countries stands still and the whole world waits until the French are ripe for the social revolution. They will then demonstrate the experiment before our eyes and the rest of the world, overcome by their example, will follow it. ... It is exactly what Fourier expected from his phalanstéres.' At the meeting in question Marx remarked that the French 'while denying all nationality appeared quite unconsciously to reconcile it with their own absorption into the model nation which was France.' True, Napoleon's hypocritical concern for the destinies of nations that had not yet achieved unity drove his opponents to the opposite extreme; and the petty-bourgeois Socialists' dislike of national concentration, i.e. economic concentration, came out in their dislike of the economic developments that led to it.

Just because he regarded the movement towards national unity as a historical advance over the period of national subdivision into minor and petty states, Marx regarded Bismarck's policy with the greatest suspicion. For a long time he had mistrusted Bismarck's policy as an exclusively Prussian one, and held Bismarck to be the tool now of Napoleon, now of Russia. To Marx the idea that Germany could be united by being Prussianised seemed absurd. He and Engels were certainly not pro-Austrian during the Prusso-Austrian war, but still less were they pro-Prussian. Engels hoped the Prussians would 'get a good hiding' and Marx was convinced that they would 'pay for their boasting.' Marx expected that the defeat of Prussia would lead to a revolution in Berlin. 'Unless there is a revolution,' he wrote to Engels on April 6, 1866, 'the Hohenzollern and Habsburg dogs will throw our country fifty or a hundred years back by civil (dynastic) wars.' Unless there were a revolution, he repeated in a letter he wrote on the same day to his friend Kugelmann in Hanover, Germany would be on the threshold of another Thirty Years' War, and that would mean a divided Germany once more.

To Marx Prussia's rapid and brilliant victory was entirely unexpected. Prussian hegemony in Germany became a fact. The unpleasant prospect of Germany being merged into Prussia became a possibility to be reckoned with. That Bismarck's ambitions were not German ambitions but 'dynastic-Hohenzollern' ambitions was plain enough. But his blunt refusal to entertain the French demand for 'compensation' for having remained neutral in the Austrian war and the harshness with which he asserted Prussian demands in the dispute about Luxemburg [sic?] immediately afterwards finally destroyed the suspicion that he was only a tool of Napoleon. The reactionary Junker Bismarck introduced universal suffrage into the North German Reichstag, though for reasons that differed profoundly from those for which Lassalle had agitated for it only a few years previously. The irresistible progress of the Prussianisation of Germany became clearer every day, and those in the workers' movement could afford to ignore it less than anybody. It had to adapt itself to the new situation, be as pliable and resilient as its opponent, Bismarck. Universal suffrage created a vast new field of action for it. The two Socialist parties were represented in the North German Reichstag, the followers of Lassalle and the 'Eisenacher,' the latter led by Liebknecht and young August Bebel.

In the Paris Chamber the Opposition parties, consisting of more or less determined Republicans and Orleanists, were represented plentifully enough. But there was not a single Socialist. Germany's greater social maturity was demonstrated by that alone. German industry had already surpassed the French. New, scientifically equipped factories were rising in the Rhineland, in Saxony, in Silesia, every year, and genuine proletarian centres were forming round them, and class differences were making their appearance more rapidly and more acutely than in any other country, including France.

The traditional idea of the leading rôle played by France in social development grew less and less justified as the years went by. In the forties Marx had held up France as a model to the Germans and measured Germany's level by that of its neighbour. From the beginning of the sixties Marx gradually began to doubt the old, familiar idea. Engels had started doubting it even earlier; and as German economic developments became more and more impressive and as the process of the unification of the state, albeit in crooked, incomplete and half-feudal forms, became more manifest, Marx gradually became convinced that it was to the German workers' movement that the future belonged. In 1870, before the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war, he wrote to Engels: 'It is my firm conviction that, though the first impulse will come from France, Germany is far riper for a social movement and will outdistance France by far. The French are guilty of great error and self-deception if they still believe themselves to be the "chosen people."' In the middle of February, 1870, he wrote to Kugelmann that he expected more for the social movement from Germany than from France. The unification of Germany was the preliminary to and the guarantee of a proletarian movement in the heart of Europe.

In the summer of 1870, when the Franco-Prussian war broke out, Marx did not hesitate for a moment. For the patriotic excesses of the German upper class and petty-bourgeoisie he had nothing but contempt, reserving particular scorn for the dithyrambic outbursts of those who had recently been his comrades and even friends. After reading Freiligrath's war poems he wrote to Engels that he would rather be a miaowing cat than a ballad-monger of that kind. He was indignant at the leaders of the Lassalle faction, who gave unconditional support to the Prussian Government in making war on France, but approved of Bebel and Liebknecht, who voted against war credits, though he did not agree with their reasons. It seemed obvious to Marx that in the struggle with Bismarck there could be no truce, even in war.

Germany's cause was not the Hohenzollerns' cause. Germany was attacked and not Prussia, and Germany must defend herself. But a German victory was essential above all in the interests of the workers' movement. Marx held that there were two reasons why it would be fatal for Louis Napoleon to win. In France the Bonapartist régime would be consolidated for many years and Central Europe would be thrown back whole decades, and the process of the unification of Germany would be interrupted. And then, as Engels wrote on August 15, 1870, there could be no more talk of an independent German workers' movement and everything would be absorbed in the struggle for the re-establishment of the national existence. On the other hand a German victory would mean the end of Bonapartism, and whatever Government followed the French would have a freer field. 'If the Prussians win,' Marx wrote to Engels immediately after the outbreak of war, 'the centralisation of the state power will be useful for the centralisation of the German working-class. Moreover, German preponderance will cause the centre of gravity of the workers' movement in Western Europe to be still more definitely shifted from France to Germany, and it is only necessary to compare the movement in the two countries from 1866 till now to see that the German working class is superior both theoretically and in organisation to the French.'

On July 23, 1870, the General Council issued a manifesto on the war. It was written by Marx. Addressed as it was to the workers of the whole world, it was obviously impossible for it to contain all the arguments that determined Marx's position. It stated that 'on the German side the war was a war of defence,' which immediately raised the question of who had placed Germany in the position of having to defend herself. In Bismarck Marx no longer saw a servant but rather a pupil and imitator of Napoleon. The manifesto, which was issued when the war had only just begun, stressed the fact that the defence of Germany might degenerate into a war upon the French people. But if the German working class permitted that, victory or defeat would be equally evil. 'All the evils that Germany had to suffer after the so-called Wars of Liberation would be revived and redoubled,' the manifesto concluded. 'The alliance of the workers of all countries will finally exterminate war.'

In a letter to Wilhelm Liebknecht Marx gave his German comrades still more specific advice. This letter has not survived, but Engels's letter to Marx, dated August 15, 1870, in which he laid down the tactical line to be adopted in a manner with which Marx entirely agreed, has been preserved. He wrote: 'In my view, what our people can do is (1) associate themselves with the national movement as long as it is confined to the defence of Germany (in some circumstances an offensive persisting right up to conclusion of peace might not be inconsistent with this); (2) at the same time emphasise the distinction between the national interests of Germany and the dynastic interests of Prussia; (3) oppose the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine--Bismarck's intention of annexing Alsace-Lorraine to Bavaria and Baden has already transpired; (4) as soon as a Republican, non-chauvinist Government is at the helm in Paris, work for an honourable peace with it; (5) continually stress the unity of interests of the workers of France and Germany, who did not want the war and are not at war with each other; (6) Russia, as in the International manifesto.' There had been only one sentence in the manifesto about Russia, pointing out that its 'sinister form' was 'lurking in the background of this suicidal struggle.'

The manifesto commended the French workers for declaring themselves against the war and against Napoleon. But that was all. Neither in the manifesto nor in the correspondence between Marx and Engels is there a word about the duties of the French proletariat during those pregnant weeks. Marx, in all the years during which a stupefied world hailed Napoleon III as a genuine heir of the Corsican, clung to his opinion that he was but 'commonplace canaille,' and long before the rottenness of the Bonaparte régime had become manifest to all beholders Marx held that its fate was already sealed. 'Whatever the result of Louis Napoleon's War with Prussia may be,' the manifesto stated, 'the death knell of the Second Empire has already sounded in Paris.' From the first day of hostilities Engels, as a student of war, was convinced that Germany would win. His articles on the campaign in the Pall Mall Gazette attracted a great deal of attention, and the accuracy with which he predicted the catastrophe of Sedan, even to the very date, confirmed his reputation as the 'General,' which was the nickname by which his friends henceforward invariably called him. Napoleon's defeat was certain, and Napoleon's defeat would mean a revolution in France. But in what a situation! 'If a revolution breaks out in Paris,' Marx wrote to Engels on August 8, 'the question arises: have they the resources and the leaders to put up serious opposition to the Prussians? It is impossible to deny that the twenty-year-long Bonapartist farce has caused enormous demoralisation. One is scarcely justified in counting on revolutionary heroism.' In the middle of August Engels still believed that the position of a revolutionary government, if it came soon, need not be desperate; but it would have to abandon Paris to its fate and continue the war from the south. It might still be possible to hold out until fresh munitions had been procured and new armies organised with which the enemy might gradually be forced back towards the frontier. But five days later Engels believed that even that possibility had vanished. 'If a revolutionary government had been formed in Paris as late as last week,' he wrote to Marx, 'something might still have been done. Now it is too late, and a revolutionary government can only make itself ridiculous, as a miserable parody of the Convention.'

The revolution was bound to come. That was certain. But Marx was just as certain that its victory in Paris could only follow defeat at the front. His certainty on this point explains the silence of the manifesto.

The French sections of the International did not allow themselves to be carried away by the wave of patriotic enthusiasm that swept the country upon the outbreak of war. Their hatred of Napoleon alone was sufficient to preserve them from that. For them to have wanted the Emperor to win the war and thus consolidate Bonapartism would have been inconceivable; and they did not believe he would win, for the weaknesses of his system were too familiar to them. The police, as usual unremitting in the invention of falsehood, alleged that cheers for Prussia had been called for at peace meetings just before the outbreak of war. Such meetings were held in places, and it became necessary to forbid patriotic demonstrations in the suburbs of Paris, because they occasionally developed into demonstrations the very reverse of patriotic. It is quite possible that some crank, conceiving himself to be a revolutionary, may actually have called for a cheer for the Prussians, but it is certain that the workers who adhered to the International had no love for Bismarck, however much they despised Napoleon. Disunited as the French Socialists were--the 'Internationaux de la dernière heure,' as the 'Old' Internationalists remarked, only served to bring more differences into the ranks--they certainly did not want a Prussian victory at the expense of France. Enslaved, humiliated and oppressed as their country might be at the hands of an iniquitous government, it nevertheless remained the country of the revolution, the heart of Europe, now and for the future. They did not believe in Napoleon, but they believed in France and France's mission.

Bakunin, who at this time was held in high regard by the members of the International in France, thought as they did. Nay more, he was an almost ideal embodiment of French revolutionary patriotism. Like Marx, he considered that indifference in international conflicts was pseudo-radical and could only be harmful to the revolution. Like Marx, he demanded the intervention of the proletariat to the full limit of its strength. But, unlike Marx, he regarded Germany and not Russia as the enemy and the chief bulwark of reaction; and Bakunin did not just mean contemporary Germany; in his eyes Germany had been the hub and pattern of despotism for centuries, ever since the Reformation and the suppression of the peasant risings in the first third of the sixteenth century. Though there were other despotic governments even more brutal than the German, that fundamental truth was not affected in his eyes, because 'Germany had made a system, a religious cult, of what in other countries was only a fact.' It was a feature of the German national character. Bakunin liked quoting the saying of Ludwig Börne that 'other people are often slaves, but we Germans always lackeys.' He called the servility of the Germans a natural characteristic which they had elevated into a system, thus making of it an incurable disease. If the Germans, condemned to slavery themselves and spreading the plague of despotism wherever they went, were to conquer France, the cause of Socialism would be lost and all hope of a revolution in Germany--a hope that in any case could only be justified by a spirit of optimism that ran counter to all experience--would have to be buried for at least half a century, and France would be threatened with the fate of Poland.

Even before the war had properly begun he believed, as Marx did, that Napoleon's defeat was inevitable; but he did not regard the defeat of France as inevitable, that is, assuming she bethought herself and a revolution broke out in time. A revolution and a revolution alone could save France, Europe and Socialism. The French, above all the workers, must rise, trample Bonapartism in the dust and hurl themselves at the enemy of France and of civilisation with the all-compelling enthusiasm of a revolutionary nation. In converting the imperialist war into a revolutionary one lay their only hope.

Bakunin became intensely active as soon as war broke out. His new activity was essentially a continuation of the old; it consisted of organising militant groups and preparing armed risings. The war had put immediate insurrection upon the order of the day. During the last days of July and the first week of August Bakunin overwhelmed his friends in France with letters, counselling them, encouraging them, urging them to immediate action. On August 11 he mentions that he had written twenty-three detailed letters to France that day. 'I have my plan ready,' he said. The details of his plan are unknown, but what they were it is not difficult to guess. On August 8, revolutionaries, led by Bakuninists, seized the town hall of Marseilles, and a rising in Paris was planned for August 9. The 'committee of action' there consisted chiefly of Bakuninists, and its leader, Pindy, was a prominent member of Bakunin's secret organisation. But the result was a fiasco, for on the morning of the ninth Pindy and his fellow-conspirators were arrested.