Manifesto of the Communist Party

The Paris Commune.

Address to the International Workingmen's Association, May 1871

The "Paris Commune" was composed by Karl Marx as an address to the General Council of the

International, and included in a book, "The Civil War in France," with the aim of distributing to

workers of all countries a clear understanding of the character and world-wide significance of the

heroic struggle of the Communards and their historical experience to learn from. The book was widely

circulated by 1872 it was translated into several languages and published throughout Europe and the

United States.

The first address was delivered on July 23rd, 1870, five days after the beginning of the Franco-

Prussian War. The second address, delivered on September 9, 1870, gave a historical overview of the

events a week after the army of Bonaparte was defeated. The third address, delivered on May 30,

1871, two days after the defeat of the Paris Commune - detailed the significance and the underlining

causes of the first workers government ever created.

The Civil War in France was originally published by Marx as only the third address, only the first

half of which is reproduced here. In 1891, on the 20th anniversary of the Paris Commune, Engels

put together a new collection of the work. Engels decided to include the first two addresses that

Marx made to the International.

The Address is included here because it can be regarded as an amendment to the Manifesto,

clarifying a number of issues relating to the state based on the experience of the Commune.

On the dawn of March 18, Paris arose to the thunder-burst of "Vive la Commune!" What is the

Commune, that sphinx so tantalizing to the bourgeois mind?

"The proletarians of Paris," said the Central Committee in its manifesto of March 18, "amidst the

failures and treasons of the ruling classes, have understood that the hour has struck for them to

save the situation by taking into their own hands the direction of public affairs.... They have

understood that it is their imperious duty, and their absolute right, to render themselves masters of

their own destinies, by seizing upon the governmental power."

But the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield

it for its own purposes.

The centralized state power, with its ubiquitous organs of standing army, police, bureaucracy,

clergy, and judicature - organs wrought after the plan of a systematic and hierarchic division of

labor - originates from the days of absolute monarchy, serving nascent bourgeois society as a

mighty weapon in its struggle against feudalism. Still, its development remained clogged by all

manner of medieval rubbish, seignorial rights, local privileges, municipal and guild monopolies,