fJ5^8 KARL MARX: A BIOGRAPHYthe town hall and immediately proclaimed the abolition of the state.
Engels wrote to Marx in September 1870 that if the workers attempted
a revolutionary rising they 'would be needlessly crushed by the German
armies and set back another 20 years'.''^8 Nevertheless, as the Provisional
Government grew more reactionary Marx began to modify his views as
to the advisability of revolt. In any case the General Council was once
again reduced to the role of helpless spectator. Marx considered the
outbreak of the Commune to be largely the result of the 'accident' that
the Prussians were at the gates of Paris. 'History', he wrote to Kugelmann,
'would be of a very mystifying nature if "accidents" played no part in it.'
But he was optimistic enough to think that 'with the struggle in Paris
the struggle of the working class with the capitalist class and its state has
entered a new phase. Whatever the immediate result of the affair, a new
starting point of world-historical importance has been achieved.'^99
Contrary to widespread public opinion after the fall of the Commune,
the International had very little influence either on its origins or on
its policies; and when Marx referred to the Commune as 'the greatest
achievement of our party since the June revolt',^100 he was using the word
'party' very loosely; and Engels was speaking even more loosely when he
called the Commune 'the child of the International intellectually',^10 ' and
also referred to it as 'the dictatorship of the proletariat'.^102 The establish-
ment of the Commune was not the result of any preconceived plan, but
of the void left in Paris when Thiers withdrew all government officials,
local and central, to Versailles. This left the Central Committee of the
National Guard as the only body capable of exercising effective control.
The Central Committee immediately instituted direct elections by man-
hood suffrage to create a popular assembly which on 28 March 1871
assumed the title Commune de Paris after the title of the Council set up
during the French Revolution in 1792.^103
The Paris section of the International could not play a great part in
the Commune; it had been crushed by Napoleon's police shortly before
the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War and was only just beginning to
reorganise itself. Of the ninety-two members on the Council of the
Commune only seventeen were members of the International. Contact
between Paris and the General Council was difficult, though Marx
received letters from some of the leaders of the Commune. Lafargue even
suggested that Engels go over to help.^104 Nor was the social and political
structure of the Commune of a nature to favour the policies of the
International: two-thirds of its members were of petit-bourgeois origins and
the key positions went either to Blanquists or to old-style Jacobins. The
actual measures passed by the Commune were reformist rather than
revolutionary, with no attack on private property: employers were forbid-