Introduction to The Civil War in France

Engels’ introduction to the third edition of The Civil War in France, written on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Paris Commune. Appeared in Die Neue Zeit Vol. 2, No. 28, 1890–1891, and in Marx’s book The Civil War in France, published in Berlin in 1891.

Engels first praised the historical significance of Marx’s The Civil War in France, calling Marx’s “gift for grasping clearly the character, the import, and the necessary consequences of great historical events, at a time when these events are still in process before our eyes, or have only just taken place” “with such clearness, and above all such truth, as has never again been attained on all the mass of literature which has been written on this subject.” Next, on the basis of a concrete analysis of the ideas of the Blanquists and the Proudhonists, Engels pointed out the fundamental reasons for the defeat of the Paris Commune and emphasized that for the proletariat to triumph, it must be led by a revolutionary party with Marxism as its guiding ideology. Then, Engels summarized the basic experience of the class struggle in France from the 1840s to the 1990s and the building of the Paris Commune government, emphasizing that the most crucial point is that the proletariat must oppose the counter-revolutionary armament with revolutionary armament, overthrow the rule of the bourgeoisie, smash the bourgeois state machinery, and establish the dictatorship of the proletariat, and highly praised the measures the Paris Commune “against the transformation of the state and the organs of the state from servants of society into masters of society”. Lastly, Engels reiterated the fundamental view of the state of Marxism, and upheld that the essence of the State was nothing but “a machine for the oppression of one class by another” and that even the proletarian state only lopped off the worst sides of this evil as much as possible. The dictatorship of the proletariat is the transition to the withering-away of the State, the necessary path from class society to classless society.

Introduction to the Civil War in France is an important document in the history of development of Marxism. In the text, in the light of the changes in the international situation and the experience of the class struggle in the 20 years after the Paris Commune, Engels highly praised the scientificity and accuracy of Marx’s review of the civil war in France, further profoundly summed up the experience and lessons of the Paris Commune, defended and developed the theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the doctrine of the state, and pointed the way and direction for the proletarian revolution.