KARL MARX

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194
IMM ome a war of aggression as envisaged by the demand for the annexation
11I 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 newfangled
'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 Orleanists
and professed Republicans in the provisional Government, he continued,
'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 emissary
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 Commune,
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