Karl Marx: A biography by David McLellan

SELECT CRITICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY^194

IMM ome a war of aggression as envisaged by the demand for the annexation
11 I Alsace and Lorraine. Borrowing from Engels' military expertise, Marx
(minted out that there were no good military reasons for supposing that
tin- possession of Alsace and Lorraine would enhance the safety of a
united Germany and that such an annexation would only sow the seed of
Iti'sh wars. With great prescience Marx continued:

If the fortune of her arms, the arrogance of success, and dynastic

intrigue lead Germany to a dismemberment of France, there will then

only remain two courses open to her. She must at all risks become the

avowed tool of Russian aggrandisement, or, after some short respite,

make again ready for another 'defensive' war, not one of those new-

fangled 'localised' wars, but a war of races - a war with the combined

Slavonian and Roman races.^92

And even more remarkably Marx told an emigre German communist:

' l lie present war will lead to one between Germany and Russia.. .. The

specific characteristics of Prussianism have never existed and can never

exist other than in alliance with and submission to Russia. Moreover, this

second war will bring to birth the inevitable social revolution in Russia.'^9 '

Somewhat more realistically than in the First Address, Marx admitted the

impotence of the working class. 'If the French workmen amid peace failed

to stop the aggressor, are German workmen more likely to stop the victor

amidst the clangour of arms?'^94 In spite of the dubious alliance of Orlean-

ists and professed Republicans in the provisional Government, he con-

tinued, 'any attempt to upset the new government in the present crisis,

when the army is almost knocking at the doors of Paris, would be a

desperate folly'.^95

Following Sedan and the declaration of the Republic in France, Marx

decided that the International had two immediate aims: to campaign for

the recognition of the Republican Government by Britain and to prevent

any revolutionary outbreak by the French working class. The first aim

had widespread support among the workers in England, though Marx

totally misjudged the situation when he talked of 'a powerful movement

among the working class over here against Gladstone ... which will

probably bring about his downfall'.^96 The General Council sent an emiss-

ary to Paris to prevent the London French committing 'stupidities there

in the name of the International';^97 and a government newspaper in Paris

went as far as publishing, on the day of the proclamation of the Com-

mune, a letter (purporting to have come from Marx but in fact a complete

forgery) which urged the Parisians to abstain from all political activity

and confine themselves to the social aims of the International. Marx was

exceedingly scornful of Bakunin's short-lived coup in Lyons when he seized