Creating the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’: early socialist literature on the Paris Commune in Britain and the United States

ABSTRACT

School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, Faculty of Arts, Australia This article analyses the role of early radical and socialist texts in forming the understanding of the Paris Commune in Britain and the United States. The Commune, while a French event, came to be associated with socialists, radicals, and as a symbol of internationalism. Marx’s The Civil War in France established the interpretation of the Commune that would see it become a radical shibboleth. This article analyses articles by Edward Beesly, Lissagaray’s History of the Commune of 1871, E.B Bax’s Short History of the Commune, and Lenin’s State and Revolution to trace the influences of Marx’s interpretation. This analysis includes examination of the radical publishers in both Britain and the United States to explore how these texts were edited and changed, and how they were circulated to reach the intended working-class audience. The article’s core questions are where did this interpretation come from, how was it constructed, and how did it come to dominate the interpretation of the Commune. This is significant due to the Commune’s pre-eminence within socialist history and how it became an example of the ‘Dictatorship of the Proletariat’ for many future revolutionaries.

KEYWORDS:

• Paris Commune
• Marx
• Britain
• United States
• publishing

We shall see further on that the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917, in different circumstances and under different conditions, continue the work of the Commune and confirm Marx's brilliant historical analysis. (Vladimir Lenin)¹

This quote from Lenin’s State and Revolution refers to the analysis of Karl Marx in The Civil War in France (CWF) and demonstrates Marx’s pre-eminence in the socialist canon of the Paris Commune. The Commune has long held a foundational role in the history of socialism. After 1871, Communards maintained a celebrity status across the emerging global socialist community. Throughout the end of the nineteenth century, the Commune was celebrated annually in many countries including Britain and the United States. Later, the USSR further incorporated the Commune into the history of communism. ‘The Internationale,’ written by Communard Eugène Pottier, became the USSR’s national anthem and remains synonymous with socialism. Perhaps most symbolically Lenin’s body was entombed with a Communard flag and a portion of a Communard banner was sent to space in 1964.² The Communard wall in Pere-Lachaise cemetery remains a site of pilgrimage where flowers are continually placed. The Commune was not pre-destined to become a socialist shibboleth. To gain this status in socialist history the pamphlets and books on the Commune quickly established its significance as the beginning of a new proletarian phase in history. This article will analyse how the English language interpretation of the Commune was constructed through Positivist articles in the newspaper Bee-Hive, Marx’s The Civil War in France, (CWF), Hippolyte-Prosper-Olivier Lissagaray’s History of the Commune of 1871, Ernest Belfort Bax’s A Short History of the Commune, and Lenin’s State and Revolution. It will also explore the importance of radical publishers, their transnational relationships, and their influence on how texts were rewritten and proliferated. Together this will demonstrate one way in which the Commune became a key moment in socialist history.

The Paris Commune began on 18 March 1871, when, after the Franco-Prussian War, soldiers were ordered to remove cannons from the butte of Montmartre, but instead revolted against their Generals and executed them. On March 26th, Paris declared itself an independent Commune with an elected government of radicals and workers. On May 21st troops from Versailles entered Paris, beginning La semaine sanglante. Workers took to the barricades as fire spread throughout Paris. The Parisian dead are estimated to be as high as 37,000. There is a rich historiography recounting the Paris Commune itself in its gruesome detail and further texts exploring its importance.³ These histories have emphasised different aspects of the Commune’s importance within French history and their respective historiographical approaches. This article seeks to engage with the Commune’s transnational significance and the radical literature which established its importance in the British and American labour movements.

The Paris Commune inspired radicals who wrote of its importance across many countries and in many languages. English is but one of these languages and has received great attention in recent scholarship. Studies have shown the cultural influences of the Commune in English language literature and artwork from both Britain and the U.S. that either revered or reviled the Commune.⁴ It was also a cultural touchstone for the middle class and in mainstream newspapers when it was referred to during the Chicago Fire of 1871 and the Great Railway Strikes of 1877.⁵ The Paris Commune, and radical interpretations of the event, were especially important in the British and American labour movement. This was because of annual celebrations that maintained the Commune’s memory hosted in Britain by the Social Democratic Federation and Socialist League, and in the U.S. by the Socialist Labor Party and International Working People’s Association.⁶ Scholarship has shown that these demonstrations were an opportunity to forge community ties, develop radical thought, and reimagine the Commune’s importance. The transnational scholarship of the Commune has demonstrated its importance in the labour movement, the culture of the working class and beyond, and how this was expressed in celebrations, artwork, and literature. This literature has demonstrated that the Commune forged a strong transnational trail. Transnational analysis of the English language texts that moved between Britain and the United States provides further opportunity to better understand the capacity of ideas to cross borders and how this is achieved.

Britain’s distinct radical tradition allowed for alternative interpretations of the Commune, including English positivists who, while drawing from a French philosophy, had their own analysis. This in turn influenced other authors who wrote in London about the Commune. Most notable was Marx himself. Additionally, while written in French, Lissagaray’s history was written in London and greatly influenced by Karl and Eleanor Marx, as such, it was developed in the same intellectual context. Similarly, Communard Pierre Vésinier wrote his history of the Commune while exiled in London in 1872, which was translated into English that same year.⁷ London had many French radical exiles from both 1848 and 1871.⁸ As such literature from England was informed by both the English and French radicals. The repeated publication of these texts by English publishing houses allowed for the proliferation of their works in the English language. This article will then trace the paths of these texts across the Atlantic as they spread their interpretation of the Commune in the United States.⁹ The transnational relationship between English and American publishing houses was developed through the proliferation of literature, particularly through popular texts on significant events such as the Commune. This meant that the canon developed in England and in the English language could easily expand its significance across the Atlantic and into the U.S.

Marx’s work remains a font of analysis and scholarship. A recent analysis of Marx’s global history of the American Civil War used an array of Marx’s work.¹⁰ Mónica Brito Vieira and Filipe Carreira da Silva also used Marx’s 1844 Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts as an example of how books themselves offer a material history that can impact and even alter their meaning.¹¹ The close attention to a text’s history demonstrates the importance of remembering that books are not static, their content and significance is instead dynamic. The approach of Vieira and da Silva was also applied to Marx’s The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte in an analysis of the text’s publication and influence in France, Germany, and the U.S.¹² Daniel Gaido has recently analysed the editorial role of Karl Marx in Lissagaray’s History of the Commune of 1871 as he translated the text into German.¹³ Recent scholarship has demonstrated the value of analysing Marx’s work both as texts and material objects. This presents an opportunity to extend this analysis by including other socialist texts, tracing the texts’ publications, and focusing on an event of significance within socialist history: the Commune.

Analysis of the Commune’s intellectual history as expressed in books, articles, and pamphlets is done so using the methods of Quentin Skinner. This is through analysis of the development of a socialist canon and how each text was informed by both the ideology surrounding it (positivism, socialism, and communism) and the dialogues engaged in by authors.¹⁴ Additionally, this analysis subscribes to the transnational turn within labour history by tracing how this canon moved across Britain and the United States and the important role of transnational ties across socialist organisations and publishers.¹⁵ This analysis will allow the article to analyse the importance of these texts as they influenced other authors, the broader socialist and labour movement, and the British and American understanding of the Commune.

The importance of this literature is partly due to its role in mythologisation and community formation. Analysis of these texts and their influence draws on collective memory, ritual, and narrative.¹⁶ Memory scholars have discussed how stories of rebellion can empower both governments and resistance organisations and how a memory is forged by an event’s early interpretations.¹⁷ Additionally, Elizabeth Armstrong and Suzanna Crage defined ‘mnemonic capacity,’ the ability to develop a commemoration and ritualise it within a growing community.¹⁸ Further analysis of narratives and dramatisation used by organisations provides renewed opportunity to consider how events are mythologised and used to define the past and clarify objectives.¹⁹ Applying historical analyses of memory, ritual, and narrative to this examination of early Commune literature demonstrates their importance in creating memories of the past, their role in mythologising an event, and how this interpretation of the Commune was spread across the Atlantic.

This article first examines the positivist interpretation of the Commune as seen in Bee-Hive. Secondly, it will introduce Marx’s CWF and its publication as it developed the socialist interpretation of the Commune. Thirdly, it will demonstrate the development of a socialist canon surrounding the Commune with the further publication of texts by Lissagaray and Bax. Fourth, it will follow the publication and proliferation of these texts across Britain and the United States. Finally, it will show the Commune was again used in Lenin’s State and Revolution and became part of Bolshevik history. This will demonstrate how the interpretation of an event is created, its dependence on transnational networks for proliferation, and that these interpretations can come to define an event and its relationships.

1. The initial positivist analysis of the commune in Bee-Hive

In 1871, Britain’s most influential trade union journal was Bee-Hive,²⁰ self-described as ‘The People’s Paper.’ George Potter started Bee-Hive after he failed to gain sympathy in the press during the builders’ strike of 1861. Bee-Hive was in print until 1878 and its largest circulation was 8,000 in 1865.²¹ It had been the official organ for the London Trades Council and IWA, though this connection was repudiated by the IWA in 1870.²² The paper had a distinct influence from the Liberal party, bought in 1869 by Daniel Pratt, who was supported financially by millionaire Liberal MP Samuel Morley.²³ Marx and Engels bemoaned Bee-Hive’s ownership in their correspondence.²⁴

During the Commune, many of Bee-Hive’s correspondents wrote that readers should not trust the mainstream press. Lloyd Jones was a well-known working-class journalist²⁵ who wrote in support of the Commune a week after its inception and asked readers to ignore the daily paper’s correspondents who attributed ‘Every mean and ignoble motive’ to the Communards.²⁶ James Aytoun wrote that the press misrepresented the ‘honest, brave, and highly intelligent’ Parisian workmen.²⁷ Positivist J.H. Bridges wanted to ‘shield [the Commune’s] memory from the foolish and all but unanimous injustice of the English Press.’²⁸ The Commune’s most prolific defender in Bee-Hive was Beesly who declared: ‘our newspapers are not to be believed.’²⁹

Beesly wrote twelve articles which defended the Commune and working class in Bee-Hive between 25 March and 24 June 1871. A professor of history at University College London, he was the chairman at the inaugural meeting of the IWA, and though not a member, a friend of Marx.³⁰ He was engaged with unions and workers’ movements but was a self-professed positivist, rather than a socialist. Frederick Harrison, another positivist, was also an ardent supporter of the Commune.³¹ Positivism was a philosophy born from French thinker August Comte which posited that through science and reason we can understand human values and society. With this understanding, a new spirituality will guide society.³² While socialist and positivists strove towards a similar vision of a better world, socialists disputed the importance of science and reason, instead positing that material conditions were the force of change. English positivists largely supported the Commune and with their intellectual focus wrote many in-depth pieces arguing for its virtue and significance.

Beesly’s correspondence abandoned the scientific and rational tenets of positivism, instead using rich emotive language to laude the Communards and Parisian workers. They defended Paris with ‘courage and devotion’ while barraged by ‘a tempest of shot and shell’ and ‘held their ground with astonishing fortitude.’³³ Beesly presented the workers as heroes, they were described as fighting ‘for labour all the world over’ and that they deserved ‘gratitude and veneration’³⁴ for their struggle. Beesly embraced the internationalism of the Vendôme Column’s destruction: this was apparently another sign of ‘the fraternal spirit growing up between the working classes of all countries.’³⁵ Beesly appreciated the internationalism in the Commune while also revering its soldiers.

Beesly’s articles provoked critical responses from many Bee-Hive contributors. Regular contributor Reverend Christopher Neville³⁶ attacked Beesly’s condemnation of the press and support of revolutionaries.³⁷ T.J. Dunning accused Beesly of being ‘too innocent to form a proper judgement’ and cited the Commune’s cessation of rent as evidence of their disastrous intent.³⁸ J.R. Hollond wrote that the use of violence must be justified and that Communards had not shown their goals to be so just.³⁹ Neville agreed with Hollond, adding that reform cannot come at the ‘cost of civil war, a sea of blood, and the destruction of an enormous amount of property.’⁴⁰ Neville also declared his adoration for the English working class had grown, due to ‘their respect for life and property.’⁴¹ Neville continued to criticise Beesly for his praise of the Parisian workers for their ‘courage, patience, order, discipline, good sense and sagacity,’ such words were now invalid with the death of the Archbishop and other prisoners.⁴² Others were more direct. Aytoun said that Beesly ‘has asserted, in his zeal for the late Commune, what is totally contrary to the real facts.’⁴³ And John Storr wrote ‘Professor Beesly, still untaught, writes in the Bee-Hive of last Saturday in his usual rabid style.’⁴⁴ Alongside criticism, others came to support Beesly. John Holmes praised Beesly's description of the ‘Reds’⁴⁵ as brave and Joseph Leaper wrote that ‘it is quite refreshing to all friends of truth to read the outspoken and manly sentiments of the learned Professor.’⁴⁶ The response to Beesly demonstrates a more traditionally Liberal perspective, willing to accept violence if it is ‘justified’ and that respect of property and rents were pillars of society not to be disturbed. This highlights the existing debate on the Commune as it was both lauded and decried.

Marx expressed in a private letter an admiration for Beesly’s articles, considering them ‘further sacrifice you are making to the good cause.’⁴⁷ This demonstrated that while he may have disagreed with the Positivist philosophy there was little to no difference in their defence of the Commune and his own. This can be seen in the original drafts of CWF in which two sections, labelled ‘Workmen and Comte’ and ‘Comtist View’ which condemned their philosophy were scrapped from the final edition because ultimately, they shared his opinion on its significance.⁴⁸ Furthermore, while they did not attempt to present themselves as communists or socialists, respectable English society conflated the two regardless.⁴⁹ The work by Beesly and other positivists then laid an ideological base for the radical interpretation of the Commune. CWF should in turn be seen as engaging and developing this position, putting the ideology in step with communism and Marxism, and away from positivism.

2. Marx’s interpretation of the commune

This section considers Marx’s interpretation of the Commune in CWF and how its intellectual accessibility allowed it to define the Commune for generations. Marx presented the Commune as a conflict of dialectical opposites: heroic workers against villainous bourgeoisie and labour against capital. CWF consists of three addresses Marx gave to the IWA: two during the Franco-Prussian war and the third on 30 May 1871. All were written and delivered in English. The first edition of the pamphlet was published on 13 June 1871, contained only the third address, and totalled 36 pages. English radical Edward Truelove published it on behalf of the IWA in their shared offices at 256 High Holborn, London. The pamphlet originally sold for twopence and had multiple runs that year.⁵⁰ It was widely circulated and printed in many languages. Marx formed his interpretation using newspaper clippings and correspondence with those in Paris.⁵¹ The first American edition was printed by the IWA’s Washington section in 1871. They included a brief preface which established the piece as a repudiation of the lies of the American press and ‘Forces of Order.’⁵² In 1891, a new edition was published in German by Friedrich Engels, for which he provided an introduction. This publication also included the first and second addresses. Engels’ introduction was included in many subsequent editions. This pamphlet came to define the Commune for many readers who were henceforth only exposed to Marx’s interpretation.

Although Marx came to support the Commune, he was initially trepidatious about the prospect of revolution. He wrote in the second address on 9 September 1870 that upsetting the new government with the enemy so near the gates of Paris ‘would be a desperate folly.’⁵³ Some historians have claimed that CWF does not represent Marx’s true interpretation of the Commune, citing a dismissive 1881 letter with Ferdinand Domela-Nieuwenhuis as evidence.⁵⁴ Shlomo Avineri separated Marx’s opinions on the actual and potential of the Commune but concluded that Marx intended to distort reality to produce the image of a working-class Commune.⁵⁵ Georges Haupt included the actual/potential divide of CWF and added Marx’s idealised image of the Commune when divining his objective in the text.⁵⁶ Some hypothesize Marx’s later negativity was due to unpleasant encounters with exiled Communards in London.⁵⁷ Kristen Ross has highlighted how CWF is different to many of Marx’s other texts; unlike Capital,⁵⁸ it was designed to influence those watching the Commune. David Harvey, Donny Gluckstein,⁵⁹ and Ross all accurately emphasise the fallibility of Marx and that his opinion changed as the Commune unfolded. Marx read of events as they happened but also received letters from Communard friends in peril, these close relationships made him a distant actor in events.⁶⁰ Such an active position meant Marx knew the value of supporting the Commune: while initially, he may have faltered, we can see whole-hearted support by his third address. Harvey and Ross both discuss this moment as being of great importance. Marx embraced the accidental nature of history when he could have denounced the Commune and continued hoping for the ideal revolutionary scenario. Instead, he chose to amplify what he valued in the Commune.⁶¹

In establishing his black-and-white interpretation of the Commune Marx’s third address first criticised the Versailles Government of National Defence to demonstrate the villainous nature of the Bourgeoisie. Marx slandered the new government: ‘[i]n this conflict between national duty and class interest, the Government of National Defence did not hesitate one moment to turn into a Government of National Defection,’⁶² referring to their willingness to work with Bismarck. Marx systematically maligned the character of those in the new government, Jules Favre (philanderer), Ernest Picard (joke), Arthur Picard (thief), and Jules Ferry (penniless barrister).⁶³ Before he turned his pen to Chief Executive Adolphe Thiers, who was portrayed as a ‘master in small state roguery, a virtuoso in perjury and treason, a craftsman in all the petty strategems, cunning devices.’⁶⁴ These condemnations are a part of Marx’s process for analysing the Commune in an accessible manner, establishing villains and heroes to oppose them.

By contrast, the workers are framed as revolutionary heroes: ‘[t]he glorious working men’s Revolution of March 18 took undisputed sway of Paris.’⁶⁵ Both in life and death: ‘[t]he self-sacrificing heroism with which the population of Paris – men, women, and children – fought for eight days after the entrance of the Versaillese, reflects as much the grandeur of their cause.’⁶⁶ Marx’s depiction shows the Commune itself to be worthy of such deeds and spirit.

These strong judgements (combining deification with character assassinations) construct the Commune as a black-and-white event. The reader has no room for ambiguity in Marx’s presentation: the Commune is a battle of good and evil. Workers and those who side with them in the revolution are heroes, worthy of the society they create; those who go against them deserve the same punishment the bourgeoisie gave the Communards.

Marx demonstrated that those in the Commune were heroes and villains, but framed the conflict itself as capital against labour: ‘they now used that state power mercilessly and ostentatiously as the national war engine of capital against labour.’⁶⁷ Marx demonstrates the bourgeois state’s function as ‘the enslavement of labour by capital.’⁶⁸ The Commune was a ‘working class government, the product of the struggle of the producing against the appropriating class.’⁶⁹ Marx presents the Commune as a working-class state, the inevitable result of class struggle.

So that others might strive to emulate his interpretation, Marx presented the Commune as a utopia achievable through emancipation: ‘With labour emancipated, every man becomes a working man, and productive labour ceases to be a class attribute.’⁷⁰ Marx also supported the Commune’s appropriation of property and capital for freeing labourers.⁷¹ The Commune was also given moral superiority through its capacity to establish peace on the streets: ‘Wonderful, indeed, was the change the Commune had wrought in Paris!’⁷² After championing the virtues of the Commune, Marx again attacked Thiers and those who fled Paris after creating the dystopic conditions leading to revolution. This utopia/dystopia paradigm brings the themes of villains against heroes, and labour against capital together.

The last section of CWF examined the bloody week to explain the glaring divisions between classes: ‘Each new crisis in the class struggle between the appropriator and the producer brings out this fact more glaringly.’⁷³ The Commune, according to Marx, has made the dividing lines clear: this is a conflict of worker and bourgeoisie, labour and capital, hero and villain, freedom and tyranny, utopia and dystopia. As the title suggested, this was a civil war, with defined enemies; to the bourgeoisie the workers were not a simple foe to be defeated, but a conflicting ideology to be exterminated.⁷⁴ The piece was written with stark, broad comparisons, intentionally designed to make readers form an allegiance with the Commune. In demonstrating the Commune as a virtuous, communist, working-class revolution, Marx strives to ensure that future revolutionary efforts will be guided by his interpretation of the Commune, rather than emulating the event itself.

When Marx first published The Communist Manifesto in 1848 it did not have a wide audience or grand reception.⁷⁵ Conversely, in 1871, Marx as head of the International, was considered by many in the mainstream to be the ‘Red Terrorist Doctor’ that orchestrated the Commune.⁷⁶ This fame and the advancements of socialism since 1848 meant that Marx’s interpretation of the Commune had a wider significance and could begin the socialist mythologisation of the Commune. Marx’s analysis of the Commune established the socialist canon and ideology surrounding the event. By placing Marx’s CWF at the centre of this ideological analysis this article applies the methodology of Skinner to highlight its significance within the canon. It is debated whether the language of the text reflects Marx’s true opinion, however, undoubtedly the edition published provided strong support for the Commune, its ideals, and its importance within socialist history. As such the subsequent texts informed by Marx’s CWF and are part of the same ideology and canon.

3. Progression of the socialist interpretation in nineteenth-century literature

Marx’s CWF became the most prominent text but the emerging socialist canon included Bax’s Short History of the Paris Commune and Lissagaray’s History of the Paris Commune of 1871. Other socialist and anarchist pamphlets existed, as did Communard's memoirs, however, none had the wide circulation, influence, or historical perspective of Bax and Lissagaray.⁷⁷ As such Bax and Lissagaray’s are analysed as part of the same socialist canon as CWF. This includes placing them in the same ideological vein as they develop the understanding of the Commune presented in CWF, expanding on its ideas, influencing their meaning, changing the understanding of the Commune, and ultimately cementing it as a socialist shibboleth. The 1870s in London were a time of intellectual development for socialism, however, without a formal political party there were no dedicated publishers of socialist literature.⁷⁸ This vacuum was filled by the Social Democratic Federation (SDF) in 1883. Twentieth Century Press was then established as the SDF’s publisher in 1891. The publisher printed many pamphlets and books from leading English socialists: Bax, Morris, Hyndman, and Eleanor Marx-Aveling and took over printing of the SDF newspaper Justice. The business was slow to develop, being relaxed at collecting payment from its working-class readers, but by 1897 began to generate profit.⁷⁹ It went on to be a leading printer for English socialists and later Bolshevik ideas throughout the century.

The SDF, Justice, and Twentieth Century Press were important developmental steps that fascilitated the emergence of socialist works that could engage publically with Marx’s interpretation. Political organisations dedicated to socialism and Marxism meant there was an audience for books and articles engaging with these ideas. Additionally, events like the Commune were vital for mythologisation. It was annually celebrated by these organisations and it was important that this history be shared across the entire movement. This was similar true in the United States where the Socialist Labor Party celebrated the Commune were looking to unify in the wake of the Haymarket Affair.

Bax and Lissagrary’s texts were sold on both sides of the Atlantic and became essential pieces of workingmen’s knowledge of the Commune. This is demonstrated through many advertisements for the texts which had them appear together and separately over the years. For the Commune’s thirtieth anniversary in 1901, the Socialist Labor Party’s People ran advertisements for the New York Labor News Company which combined Lissagaray’s History of the Commune of 1871, Bax’s Short History of the Commune and Marx’s CWF. Each book had a section discussing its contents, size, and cost. These books were advertised as the quintessential working man’s knowledge of the Commune. Marx’s, the cheapest, was described as ‘the masterly manifesto on the Commune.’⁸⁰ Advertisements in Justice described Lissagaray’s text as: ‘The only Reliable and Authentic Narrative of this remarkable movement of ‘71’⁸¹ in 1898 and then in 1912 ‘The best history of the Commune of 1871 ever written.’⁸² It is noteworthy that these advertisements appear so far apart, highlighting the longevity of Lissagaray’s work. One such advertisement in 1906, a decade after its initial publication, stated that:

So unique were the circumstance connected with the inauguration of the Commune that no history dealing with all the conditions can be ignored. Mr. Bax’s historical reputation is beyond question, and the book he has produced demands a place in every home and all libraries.⁸³

Advertisements connected the three texts, additionally, advertisements for Lissagaray’s and Bax’s texts were sold as histories of the Commune that workers ought to read and have in their libraries.

Bax was a leading English socialist whose Commune history was sold on both sides of the Atlantic. Bax was born to a Victorian, middle-class family and followed news of the Commune when he was sixteen. He considered the Bloody Week as the ‘martyrdom of all that was noblest,’⁸⁴ shedding tears at its downfall. That year he began attending meetings of Positivists due to their support of the Commune, seen from figures such as Beesly.⁸⁵ In 1879 he attended a Communard celebration and was exposed to Marxism.⁸⁶ Bax became a leading figure in British socialism, a member of the SDFand Socialist League, and a frequent contributor to Justice and Commonweal.⁸⁷

On 27 January 1894, Justice began publishing articles by Bax under the title ‘The Paris Commune’ which together formed his book A Short History of the Paris Commune. The seventeenth and final article was published on 1 December 1894 and in 1895 it was published by Twentieth Century Press. This edition also included the three addresses by Marx that comprise CWF and was republished in 1903 and 1907.⁸⁸ Bax had previously written A Short Account of the Commune of Paris in 1886 with William Morris and Victor Dave.⁸⁹ This other much shorter pamphlet was sold through the Socialist League and did not have the same wide circulation as Bax’s later work.

Bax argued that the central lesson of the Commune was that it is of utmost importance to have a single organisation of socialists and workers to lead the revolution with a clear and unified goal.⁹⁰ The reader was also reminded that the capitalist media is not to be trusted, as it will always defend ‘the interests, real or imagined, of the dominant capitalist class.’⁹¹ Though critical of the Communard government, Bax still portrayed the workers as heroes who acted ‘in defence of an ideal’ with unique bravery which redeemed the century.⁹² Furthermore, he revered the martyrdom of the militant ‘willing to surrender himself completely for a future that meant the happiness of his class and a nobler life for humanity.’⁹³ Bax maintained Marx’s emphasis on heroic workers and a villainous bourgeoisie but insisted upon a novel distinction between the workers and the Communard government.

Hippolyte Prosper-Olivier Lissagaray had received a classical education, travelled in the United States and in 1860 moved to Paris where he ran a literary society. An opponent of the Second Empire, throughout the 1860s he began many newspapers and was imprisoned repeatedly. Having been a squadron commander in the Franco-Prussian War, at the news of the Commune, he returned to Paris as a journalist and then fighter on the barricades during the Bloody Week. After the Commune, he went to England via Belgium where he met the Marx family and became the fiancée (though never married) of Eleanor Marx, Karl’s daughter. It was during this time that Lissagaray wrote his History of the Paris Commune of 1871 with much assistance from Eleanor. It was first published in French in 1876, Karl Marx then wrote a German translation in 1877, and Eleanor an English translation in 1886. Lissagaray’s closeness to the Marx family was extremely influential on his work. He had predominantly been a republican during the Commune, it was only through his time with the Marx family that his work began to adopt class analysis and socialist language.⁹⁴

Eleanor Marx’s introduction highlights that the book appears largely unedited, because ‘It had been entirely revised and corrected by my father. I want it to remain as he knew it.’⁹⁵ The work done by Karl Marx is understated by Eleanor, Karl provided many new paragraphs and pages as he edited the work. This has been closely detailed and analysed by Daniel Gaido in a recent article who highlighted that Marx’s editing served to concretise his own analysis of the Commune. This was shown in Lissagaray’s revised manuscript which now included analysis of the existing political and social conditions in Paris, the flaws of the Commune leaders, and the Commune’s important legacy.⁹⁶ Lissagaray’s history was published in English by Reeves and Turner in 1886, and then in New York by the International Publishing Company in 1886 and 1898. T.F. Unwin of London printed a 1902 edition. Unsurprisingly, it was quickly associated with the Marxist interpretation of the Commune.

In Lucien Sanial’s appendix on the Bloody Week for the New York 1902 edition of The Paris Commune, he says that ‘In order to form an approximate idea of their extent and savagery, it is necessary to read [Lissagaray’s] thrilling account.’⁹⁷ It was advertised first on a list titled: ‘The Best Socialistic Literature’ in the International Library Publishing Co. 1900 edition of CWF.⁹⁸ Raymond Postgate also recommended it as a fuller history of the Commune in his own 1921 CWF introduction.⁹⁹ In 1909, Justice began publishing excerpts of the text to educate the English people about the Commune’s importance.¹⁰⁰ Lissagaray’s work was often advertised alongside Marx’s and is a part of the same socialist canon. Working-class interest in the Commune could also be gauged in Lissagaray’s popularity at working-class libraries.¹⁰¹

Reviews of Lissagaray’s book show that it was immediately associated with socialism; partially due to Eleanor’s introduction. Pall Mall Gazette criticised Lissagaray and his text’s class-based approach: ‘Hatred of the middle class animates every line of his book.’¹⁰² Birmingham Daily Post used quotes from Eleanor’s introduction to explain the book and noted that the Bloody Week and trials were of the ‘saddest dramatic interest.’¹⁰³ Reynolds Newspaper included three large excerpts in an overwhelmingly positive review.¹⁰⁴ In the Socialist League’s Commonweal, William Morris wrote that it should ‘be read by all students of history as well as by all Socialists.’¹⁰⁵ The newspaper also included a full review written by Bax that recommended: ‘it ought to be in the hands of every Socialist.’¹⁰⁶ However, Bax’s review also discussed the Commune and often reflected his own opinion. These reviews are indicative of how quickly this work was accepted amongst radicals.

Lissagaray’s book used his own experiences from the barricades to inform his history of the Commune. The text recounts the Commune’s history with heroic imagery to create a virtuous depiction of the Commune, one worth emulating. Historian Robert Tombs accurately described it as ‘passionate, caustic, often unreliable, coloured by his own views, friendships and enmities, yet detailed documented and readable, it is still after more than a century arguably the best general history of the Commune.’¹⁰⁷ Lissagaray follows the chronological events of the Commune, addresses new laws as they are announced, the initial support of the provinces, the military defeats, personnel changes and great attention is given to the final Bloody Week. Lissagaray’s past as a journalist, his experience on the barricades, and his relationships with those executed or exiled lend his work authenticity and authority that other authors cannot possibly match.

Lissagaray witnessed the death of Delescluze as he dramatically stood atop the barricades, Lissagaray wrote: ‘The Versaillese have stolen his body, but his memory will remain enshrined in the heart of the people.’¹⁰⁸ Lissagaray believes that through death Delescluze, and all other dead communards, became immortal. Lissagaray also discussed Versailles’ tribunals and short interrogations that followed these heroic deaths:

‘Did you take arms? Did you serve the Commune? Show your hands.’ If the resolute attitude of a prisoner betrayed a combatant, if his face was unpleasant, without asking for his name, his profession, without entering any note upon any register, he was classed. ‘You?’ was said to the next one, and so on to the end of the file, without excepting the women, children, and old men.¹⁰⁹

This writing uses didactic language and is more personal, with the word ‘You,’ the reader is asked a question and interrogated in the process. If they respect the heroes of the Commune and the society they represent, then readers must answer ‘yes.’ The reader is ‘classed,’ their punishment is decided and must instead take up arms. Lissagaray wrote an educational history of the Commune but charged it with emotive power. Both Lissagaray’s and Bax’s texts were deeply informed by Marx and responded to his work. As such they reinforced each other and developed a canon of texts which was proliferated across Britain and the United States.

4. The re-publication and dominance of Marx’s The Civil War in France

The process by which Marx’s opinion on the Commune came to dominate can be traced in the re-publication of his work. CWF appeared in working-class orientated pamphlets and newspapers consistently as Marx’s writing was broadly circulated throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This proliferation was fascilitated by the continued growth of socialist and Marxist organisations dedicated to this process of re-publication and growing transnational ties that allowed Marx’s work to reach an international audience. Marx’s interpretation became dominant amongst socialists and radicalised workers because of his stature within their community, the clarity of his short work on the Commune, and CWF’s widespread accessibility. Many early twentieth-century editions included additional appendices, notes, or introductions. These additions added to the history of the Commune and were designed by editors to give further weight and significance to CWF.

Initially, Marx’s interpretation of the Commune was circulated through newspapers. Marx’s third address was printed over six editions of Workingman’s Advocate, between 15 July and 2 September 1871.¹¹⁰ On 17 June 1871, days after the pamphlet’s publication, Bee-hive printed excerpts from Marx’s third address and advertised the pamphlet.¹¹¹ A CWF advertisement appeared in the English newspaper The Republican on 15 June 1871 recommending that ‘Everybody should read it.’¹¹² On 1 August, The Republican also printed part of a debate the Land and Labour League held on the virtues of CWF.¹¹³ These newspapers had a large circulation within the community of radicals and are indicative of organisations eager to spread Marx’s interpretation to as wide a readership as possible.

In 1891, Bax provided the English translation of Engels’ originally German introduction which was used in both the U.S. and Britain. In London, it was included in the unusually titled The Commune of Paris being the Addresses of the International Workingmen’s Association on the Franco-German War of 1870, and the Pamphlet of the same body, The ‘Civil War in France’ of 1871 which was published by Twentieth Century Press Limited. An advertisement for the Twentieth Century Press edition also appeared in Justice on 18 July 1896.¹¹⁴ In the second text, both Engels’ and Bax’s names are on the front page, but the author is the International Workingman’s Association, rather than Marx himself. Additionally, included in Bax’s A Short History of the Paris Commune, also published by Twentieth Century Press, were the three addresses of the IWA, the third titled CWF, though again without Marx’s name.¹¹⁵ These addresses were included in both the 1895 and 1907 editions. While Bax had presented a different interpretation of the Commune, for some readers, he was closely associated with Marx’s opinion.

The many transatlantic publishers for CWF shared connections and inventory when spreading socialist literature. In Chicago 1886, Charles H. Kerr & Company began as a publishing house for the Western Unitarian Conference magazine Unity.¹¹⁶ In 1899, under the influence of Algie Simons and Chicago’s increasing radicalism, Kerr and his company moved towards Marxism and began translating and publishing Socialist literature for American audiences.¹¹⁷ In 1901, the company purchased the pamphlets’ inventory, including copyrights and printing materials, from New York’s International Library Publishing Company, which was founded by the Socialist Labor Party.¹¹⁸ The collection included Marx’s CWF, with the introduction translated by Bax. Simons travelled to Europe and made international connections with London’s SDF and other groups to secure more literature for their audience.¹¹⁹ This relationship went both ways, as many Kerr editions of socialist work were sold in English radical bookshops and distributed by English organisations. English workers could become shareholders in the company and buy books at half price.¹²⁰ Between their books and magazines, the Company garnered an audience of both the working class and radical intellectuals.¹²¹

The Socialist Labor Party had been initially developed to represent the International as its headquarters were moved to New York as part of Marx’s schism of the organisation. The organisation’s membership was largely German migrants and while it tried to develop influence within the Knights of Labor, it was largely unsuccessful until the organisation went into decline. In 1890 Daniel De Leon joined the organisation and soon assumed a leadership position. The organisation began to work towards reaching a wider audience, represented by their new English language newspaper The People, established in 1891. This new emphasis on publishing meant developing working-class awareness of socialism and its history.

Marx’s CWF was reprinted in newspapers and new editions from multiple publishers. Beginning 17 March to 7 April 1895, The People printed the third address over four issues and ran advertisements for socialist books, including CWF.¹²² The International Library Publishing Co. of New York became the SLP’s printing house. It released CWF as volume one of their socialist literature series in 1900. It contained Engels’ introduction (translated by Bax), the third address, and advertisements for similar socialist literature.¹²³ In 1902, the New York Labor News Company, the Socialist Labor Party’s publisher, published CWF with notes and an appendix by Lucien Sanial, a French leader of the party. The pamphlet was instead titled The Paris Commune, perhaps due to the 1901 French edition of the text edited by Charles Longuet, retitled La Commune de Paris. New York Labor News reprinted this pamphlet in 1913, 1914, 1917, 1919, 1920, 1934 and beyond.

Sanial’s appendix added gruesome details of the Bloody Week using newspapers and books as sources and gave greater clarity to readers of the villainous nature of the Government of National Defence. Sanial’s discussion on the Bloody Week began with General Galliffet’s response to a woman pleading for her life: ‘Madame, I have visited every theatre in Paris, your acting will have no effect on me.’¹²⁴ Sanial also wrote of the nightmarish mass graves ‘immense pits ten meters square … in which layers of twenty corpses.’¹²⁵ Of the many who were executed, there were stories of ‘people imperfectly shot and buried before life was extinct’ leading to tales from nights where ‘houses in the neighborhood were roused by distant moans, and in the morning a clenched hand was seen protruding through the soil.’¹²⁶ These ghastly depictions were enhanced by Sanial's reminder about reports of the Seine running red with blood during the Bloody Week. The book also included extensive notes, further educating readers. In his address, Marx showed the bourgeoisie as greedy, idiotic, and geared wholly towards the preservation of their wealth. Sanial added to this by showing them as monsters, incapable of mercy, compassion, or humanity.

Marx’s interpretation of the Commune became so closely associated with the event itself that editors were keen to expand it by including Marx’s smaller, separate discussions. Both Kerr and New York’s International Publishers included four letters from Marx to Dr. Kugelmann on the Commune.¹²⁷ In these letters, Marx referred to the Communards as too ‘magnanimous’ towards their opponents and labelled them ‘Heaven-Stormers.’¹²⁸ He also wrote that during the Commune he was ‘continually denounced’ and after his address he had ‘the honor of being the best calumniated and most menaced man of London.’¹²⁹ For the reader, these letters accentuated the image of Communards as heroes but also painted a clearer picture of Marx. These additions indicated that the Commune was becoming more associated with Marx over time, so much so that anything he wrote on the matter was thought worthy of publication.

The continued growth of socialist and Marxist organisations on both sides of the Atlantic meant that Marx’s work was regularly republished. This aided in the mythologisation of the Commune and established Marx as a leading political writer and theorist for the emerging audience. The many editions of CWF from different organisations and companies make it apparent that an American worker did not have to look hard to find a copy: it was in their newspapers, advertisements, and accessible from many groups for a small fee of 5–25 cents. The wide distribution of Marx’s writing also meant that for many it was not just the dominant, but the only opinion they read on the matter.

5. After the Bolshevik revolution: Lenin’s commune

After the Russian Revolution of October 1917, the Commune came to be closely associated with Bolshevism, which was reflected in the new editions of the CWF. In England, the 1921 Labour Publishing Co. edition included a preface written by Raymond Postgate. Postgate was an accomplished journalist and in June 1921 he became editor-in-chief of the Communist Party of Great Britain’s (CPBG)¹³⁰ newspaper, The Communist.¹³¹ In his introduction, Postgate exalted the value of Marx's work, not only for displaying his theories ‘but purely and simply as an historical record of facts.’¹³² In presenting Marx’s work as fact, Postgate demonstrates that Marx’s interpretation had come to define the Commune over the previous fifty years. However, much of the introduction focuses on the important parallels between 1871 and 1917. The Commune was an end for the ‘epoch of ‘bourgeois’ revolutions’ and the beginning when afterwards ‘we find that all over Europe the uprising revolutionary and reformist movements have for their object the economic and political defeat of the capitalist class.’¹³³ This process found its resolution in 1917: ‘Bolshevik Russia is merely the Commune come back to claim its revenge.’¹³⁴ This depiction of history moving forward is important for showing readers how Marx’s dialectic had approached fulfilment. It validated the current Soviet government, and the communist parties outside the Soviet Union, while elevating the historic import of the Commune. Postgate ended his introduction: ‘So, to-day, formally different, but essentially the same, the Communard period has returned.’¹³⁵ This indicates that only four years after the Bolshevik revolution, the Commune is already considered a part of the larger Bolshevik mythos.

By the 1930s, Lenin’s writing on the Commune came to be almost as closely associated with it as Marx’s. CPBG published through Martin and Lawrence, later Lawrence and Wishart, and released their edition of CWF in 1933, 1937, and 1941. The appendix of the 1933 Martin and Lawrence, and the 1933 International Publishers editions of CWF included an article from 1908 by Lenin in Zagranichnaya Gazeta. This article reminded the audience of the two-fold goals of the Commune, the liberation of France from the Prussians, and the ‘socialist liberation of the workers from capitalism.’¹³⁶ Most importantly Lenin showed that the value of the Commune was in its lessons: ‘it stirred up the socialist movement throughout Europe, it demonstrated the value of civil war, it dispersed patriotic illusions and shattered the naïve faith in the common national aspirations of the bourgeoisie.’¹³⁷ Lenin’s arguments are important, but for the student of the Commune, the very inclusion of Lenin’s writing is itself of greater significance. In the linking of Lenin to later editions of CWF, Bolshevism and the Commune – 1871 and 1917 – are also drawn closer together.

One of Lenin’s most influential texts, State and Revolution, also included a chapter which closely analysed Marx’s CWF. It was written on the eve of the October Revolution and first published in Russian the next year, 1918. To get socialist materials out of the USSR, emissaries to Western countries filled their suitcases with books and pamphlets which went to friendly organisations.¹³⁸ State and Revolution was published jointly in October 1919 by the British Socialist Party in London and the Socialist Labour Press of Glasgow. The British Socialist Party went on to join other organisations to become the CPBG which often republished State and Revolution. Lawrence and Wishart printed editions in 1933, 1935, 1941, 1942, and 1947. In 1931 Martin Lawrence also published as a part of their Little Lenin Library, The Paris Commune, which included eleven different excerpts of where Lenin had written or spoken on the Commune.¹³⁹ Lenin’s writings faced greater difficulty entering the American market, where Kerr’s radical publishing programme had faced state repression for its anti-war stance.¹⁴⁰ New York’s Vanguard Press printed it in 1926, 1927, and 1929, while International Publishers printed it in 1932, 1933, and 100,000 copies in 1934.¹⁴¹ The text concentrated largely on its titular concepts, with the Commune as a key example.

After the Russian Revolution historians focussed more on the Socialist interpretation of the Commune and its connections to Bolshevism. In 1896, Thomas March’s History of the Paris Commune 1871 made no mention of Marx or Lissagaray.¹⁴² However, after the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, Edward Mason’s history from 1930 began discussing Marx and Lenin in his Introduction’s first pages and attacked their ‘Communist interpretation’ in his final chapter.¹⁴³ In 1937, Frank Jellinek also included them in his more favourable history.¹⁴⁴ The Commune’s association with socialism meant that after the Russian Revolution, it was further connected to the new Soviet state.

Marx’s writing became the dominant interpretation of the Commune through its repeated publication in the socialist and communist organisations of the U.S. and Britain. This established the Commune as a key part of socialist history, but interest in the Commune also elevated the relevance of Marx’s work. If workers wanted to learn more about socialism, Bolshevism, or the Commune, all topics were linked, through the eminently available CWF. Lenin then took Marx’s message and amplified it through his own writing and the Bolshevik press, cementing it as a part of the Commune.

6. Conclusion

This article’s analysis of the initial reaction to the Commune, the publication of socialist texts, and their proliferation across Britain and the United States demonstrates the creation and establishment of a socialist canon. As these texts spread the Commune became a more prominent aspect of socialist history. It was annually celebrated in both Britain and the United States and referenced in articles and speeches as an event expected to be understood by their audience. The increased mythologisation of the Commune aided in the development of these socialist organisations.

This analysis has drawn upon the intellectual history of Skinner, transnational labour history, and emerging scholarship on the material role of Marxist literature. These methods have demonstrated how a canon can be created and proliferated. This canon came to define the Commune as a socialist event, as such, this process highlights the power of literature to create the dominant understanding of an event. The sources used throughout this analysis have included many editions of the same text to explore how editorial changes reveal new meaning in a text’s importance and understanding. It further highlights the importance of considering the additional appendices, introductions, and notations as part of a text’s history, interpretation, and relevance. Marx’s CWF was at the core of the socialist interpretation of the Commune. It created an accessible interpretation of the Commune which others further built upon. This process of building was facilitated by the international spread of this literature which gave it further relevance by making it accessible to a wider readership as possible. This developed a cycle in which the Commune grew in significance due to the literature written on it, which prompted the publication of further literature. The wide publication of this canon allowed the Commune to become firmly entrenched within Bolshevik and socialist history and established the Commune as a foundational event.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 V.I. Lenin, State and Revolution (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1951), 91.

2 Robert Tombs, The Paris Commune 1871 (London: Longman, 1999), 202.

3 Histories of the Commune: Eugene Schulkind, The Paris Commune of 1871 (London: Historical Association, 1971); Tombs, Commune; Donny Gluckstein, The Paris Commune: Revolution in Democracy (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2011); John Merriman, Massacre: Life and Death of the Paris Commune (New York: Basic Books, 2014); David Shafer, The Paris Commune: French Politics, Culture, and Society at the Crossroads of the Revolutionary Tradition and Revolutionary Socialism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005); Casey Harison, ‘The Paris Commune of 1871, the Russian Revolution of 1905, and the shifting of the revolutionary tradition’, Critical essay, History and Memory 19, no. 2 (2007); Ann Rigney, ‘Remembering Hope: Transnational Activism Beyond the Traumatic’, Memory Studies 11, no. 3 (2018); David Harvey, Consciousness and the Urban Experience (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985).

4 Kristin Ross, The Emergence of Social Space: Rimbaud and the Paris Commune (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988); Michelle Coghlan, Sensational Internationalism: The Paris Commune and the Remapping of American Memory in the Long Nineteenth Century (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016); Owen Holland, Literature and Revolution British Responses to the Paris Commune of 1871 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2022).

5 Philip Katz, From Appomattox to Montmartre: Americans and the Paris Commune (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998).

6 Bruce Nelson, Beyond the Martyrs: Social History of Chicago's Anarchists, 1870–1900 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1988); Coghlan, Sensational; Kristin Ross, Communal Luxury: Political Imaginary of the Paris Commune (London: Verso, 2015); Laura C. Forster, ‘The Paris Commune in the British Socialist Imagination, 1871–1914’, History of European Ideas 46, no. 5 (2020).

7 Pierre Vesinier, History of the Commune of Paris (London: Chapman and Hall, 1872).

8 Laura C. Forster, ‘The Paris Commune in London and the Spatial History of Ideas, 1871–1900’, Historical Journal 62, no. 4 (2019).

9 It has been highlighted by many authors how the ties of publishing and newspapers connected many radical groups across the Atlantic and Europe: Constance Bantman, ‘Jean Grave and French Anarchism: A Relational Approach (1870s–1914)’, International Review of Social History 62, no. 3 (2017); Andrew Hoyt, ‘Methods for Tracing Radical Networks: Mapping the Print Culture and Propagandists of the Sovversivi’, in Without Borders or Limits: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Anarchist Studies, ed. Jorell Meléndez Badillo and Nathan Jun (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013); James Michael Yeoman, Print Culture and the Formation of the Anarchist Movement in Spain, 1890–1915 (New York: Routledge, 2020).

10 Matteo Battistini, ‘Karl Marx and the Global History of the Civil War: The Slave Movement, Working-Class Struggle, and the American State within the World Market’, International Labor and Working-Class History 100 (2021).

11 Mónica Brito Vieira Filipe Carreira da Silva, The Politics of the Book: A Study on the Materiality of Ideas (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019), 62–95.

12 Sam Stark, ‘The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte in the United States, Germany, and France, 1852–1932’ (PhD University of Pennsylvania, 2021).

13 Daniel Gaido, ‘The First Workers' Government in History: Karl Marx's Addenda to Lissagaray's History of the Commune of 1871’, Historical Materialism: Research in Critical Marxist Theory 29, no. 1 (2021).

14 Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978); James Tully, ‘The Pen is a Mighty Sword: Quentin Skinner's analysis of politics’, in Meaning and Context: Quentin Skinner and His critics, ed. James Tully and Quentin Skinner (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1988).

15 For a close reading of the state of transnational labour history and its significance, see Neville Kirk, Transnational Radicalism and the Connected Lives of Tom Mann and Robert Samuel Ross (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2017), 37–65.

16 Jan Assmann, Cultural Memory and Early Civilization: Writing, Remembrance, and Political Imagination (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Susannah Radstone, ‘Memory Studies: For and Against’, Memory Studies 1, no. 1 (2008): 31–6.

17 Steven Pfaff and Guobin Yang, ‘Double-Edged Rituals and the Symbolic Resources of Collective Action: Political Commemorations and the Mobilization of Protest in 1989’, Theory & Society 30, no. 4 (2001): 580. Andrea Cossu, ‘Commemoration and Processes of Appropriation: The Italian Communist Party and the Italian Resistance (1943–48)’, Memory Studies 4, no. 4 (2011): 387–8.

18 Elizabeth Armstrong and Suzanna Crage, ‘Movements and Memory: The Making of the Stonewall Myth’, American Sociological Review 71, no. 5 (2006): 726.

19 David Carr, Time, Narrative, and History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), 15; David Kertzer, Ritual, Politics, and Power (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), 9–12; Jeffrey C. Alexander, The Drama of Social Life (Malden, MA: Polity, 2017).

20 Stanley Harrison, Poor Men's Guardians (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1974), 141–2.

21 Ibid., 174–5.

22 Ibid., 144–5.

23 Stephen Coltham, ‘George Potter, the Junta, and the Bee-Hive Part 2’, International Review of Social History 10, no. 1 (1965): 33.

24 Ibid., 33.

25 Ibid., 41.

26 ‘The Revolt in Paris’, Bee-Hive, March 25, 1871.

27 ‘Republicanism v. Communism’, Bee-Hive, June 10, 1871.

28 ‘Dr. Bridges on the Commune of Paris’, Bee-Hive, July 8, 1871.

29 ‘Professor Beesly on the Paris Revolution’, Bee-Hive, March 25, 1871.

30 Royden Harrison, The English defence of the Commune, 1871 (London: Merlin Press, 1971), 37–8.

31 F.B. Smith, ‘Some British Reactions to the Commune’, in Paradigm for revolution?, ed. Eugene Kamenka (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1972), 81–2.

32 Harrison, Defence, 19–21.

33 ‘Defence of Paris’, Bee-Hive, May 20, 1871.

34 ‘Professor Beesly on the Commune’, Bee-Hive, April 29, 1871.

35 Ibid.

36 Coltham, ‘Bee-Hive’, 32.

37 ‘Professor Beesly’, Bee-Hive, April 1, 1871.

38 ‘The Commune in Paris’, Bee-Hive, April 8, 1871.

39 ‘The Commune’, Bee-Hive, May 20, 1871.

40 ‘The Commune’, Bee-Hive, May 27, 1871.

41 Ibid.

42 ‘The Late Commune’, Bee-Hive, June 3, 1871.

43 ‘The Situation in France’, Bee-Hive, June 24, 1871.

44 ‘Modern Revolutions’, Bee-Hive, June 10, 1871.

45 ‘Belleville v. Versailles’, Bee-Hive, April 29, 1871.

46 ‘Professor Beesly and the Paris Commune’, Bee-Hive, April 22, 1871.

47 Harrison, Guardians, 148.

48 Harrison, Defence, 14–18.

49 Ibid., 21-2.

50 The General Council of the International Working-Men's Association, The Civil War in France. 2nd ed. (London: Edward Truelove, 1871).

51 Roger Thomas, ‘Enigmatic Writings: Karl Marx's The Civil War in France and the Paris Commune of 1871’, Article, History of Political Thought 18, no. 3 (1997): 483–511.

52 International, Defence of the Paris Commune (Washington, DC: The International, 1871), 2.

53 Karl Marx, The Civil War in France (USSR: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1948), 44.

54 Eugene Schulkind, The Paris Commune of 1871: The View from the Left (London: Cape, 1972), 244–5; Thomas, ‘Enigmatic’, 484.

55 Shlomo Avineri, The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx (London: Cambridge University Press, 1968), 239–49.

56 Georges Haupt, Aspects of International Socialism, 1871–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 35.

57 Thomas, ‘Enigmatic’, 506; Tombs, Commune, 199.

58 Ross, Luxury, 7.

59 Gluckstein, Commune, 181.

60 Ross, Luxury, 77.

61 Ibid., 77–8; David Harvey, Spaces of Hope (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000), 174–5.

62 Marx, Civil War, 48.

63 Ibid., 51–2.

64 Ibid., 52.

65 Ibid., 65.

66 Ibid., 104.

67 Ibid., 76.

68 Ibid., 78.

69 Ibid., 83.

70 Ibid., 84.

71 Ibid., 84.

72 Ibid., 94.

73 Ibid., 104.

74 Ross, Luxury, 81.

75 Gareth Stedman Jones, Karl Marx, and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (London: Penguin Books, 2002), 14–15.

76 Isaiah Berlin, Karl Marx; His Life and Environment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963), 259; Francis Wheen, Karl Marx (London: Fourth Estate, 1999), 333–4.

77 Peter Kropotkin, The Commune of Paris (London: J. Turner, 1896); Vesinier, History of the Commune of Paris.

78 The importance of intellectualism in socialism and its relationship to the Commune in the 1870s is discussed in Forster, ‘The Paris Commune in London’. The significance of the SDF was perhaps best highlighted by Thompson when he labelled ‘The effective birth of modern Socialism in Britain’ as the formation of the SDF: E.P. Thompson, William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary (New York: Pantheon Books, 1977), 283.

79 Andrew Rothstein, A House on Clerkenwell Green (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1966), 59–60.

80 ‘The Anniversary of the Paris Commune’, People, March 2, 1901.

81 ‘Advertisement’, Justice, October 8, 1898, 1.

82 ‘Miscellaneous’, Justice, March 2, 1912, 8.

83 ‘Advertisement’, Justice, June 20, 1903, 6.

84 E.B. Bax, Reminiscences and Reflexions of a Mid and Late Victorian (New York: A.M. Kelley, 1967), 29.

85 John Cowley, The Victorian Encounter with Marx (London: British Academic Press, 1992), 16.

86 Ibid., 18–20.

87 Ibid., 30–5.

88 E.B. Bax, A Short History of the Paris Commune (London: Twentieth Century Press, 1895), 88–135.

89 Victor Dave and William Morris E.B. Bax, A Short Account of the Commune of Paris (London: Socialist League Office, 1886).

90 ‘The Paris Commune’, Justice, December 1, 1894.

91 Ibid.

92 ‘The Paris Commune’, Justice, August 4, 1894.

93 Ibid.

94 Gaido, ‘First Workers' Government’, 54.

95 Lissagaray, History of the Commune of 1871, trans. Eleanor Marx Aveling (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1967), i.

96 Gaido, ‘First Workers' Government’, 107–8.

97 Karl Marx, The Paris commune (New York: New York Labor News Company, 1920), 110.

98 Karl Marx, The Civil War in France, vol. 1 (New York: International Library, 1900), 81.

99 Karl Marx, The Civil War in France, European History Pamphlets (London: Labour Publishing, 1921), 5.

100 ‘Next Week’, Justice, February 6, 1909, 3; ‘History of the Commune of 1871’, Justice, February 13, 1909, 5, and this continued over many weeks.

101 Haupt, Aspects, 30.

102 ‘History of the Commune’, Pall Mall Gazette, September 6, 1886.

103 ‘New Books’, Birmingham Daily Post, October 8, 1886.

104 ‘Review of Books’, Reynolds Newspaper, August 22, 1886.

105 ‘The Translation of … ’, Commonweal, August 21, 1886.

106 ‘Lissagaray’s “History of the Commune”’, Commonweal, December 4, 1886.

107 Tombs, Commune, 203.

108 Lissagaray, Commune, 362.

109 Ibid., 384.

110 Workingman’s Advocate (1864–1879) was founded as the Chicago Trades Assembly’s official newspaper by Andrew Cameron, and became the organ for the National Labor Union in 1866: Wilhelm Liebknecht, Letters to the Chicago Workingman's advocate, ed. Philip Foner (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1983), 3.

111 ‘The International Working Men’s Association’, Bee-Hive, June 17, 1871, 5.

112 ‘The Civil War in France’, Republican, June 15, 1871.

113 ‘Mr. Odger, Karl Marx, and the International’, Republican, August 1, 1871.

114 ‘The Commune of Paris’, Justice, July 18, 1896.

115 Bax, Commune, 99.

116 Allen Ruff, We Called Each Other Comrade (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997), 20–1.

117 Ibid., 82.

118 Ibid., 86.

119 Ibid., 87.

120 Stuart Macintyre, A Proletarian Science: Marxism in Britain 1917–1933 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 66–7.

121 Mark Pittenger, American Socialists and Evolutionary Thought (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993), 120.

122 ‘The Paris Commune’, People, March 17, 1895, 3; ‘The Paris Commune’, People, March 24, 1895, 3; ‘The Paris Commune’, People, March 31, 1895, 3; ‘The Paris Commune’, People, April 7, 1895, 3.

123 Marx, CWF (1900), 181–2.

124 Marx, CWF (1920), 112.

125 Ibid., 110.

126 Ibid., 112.

127 Karl Marx, The Civil War in France (Chicago: C.H. Kerr, 1934); Karl Marx, The Civil War in France (New York: International Publishers, 1940).

128 Marx, CWF (1934), 127.

129 Ibid., 129.

130 The CPGB was formed in 1920 to provide a unified Communist Party for the Third International. It included the British Socialist Party which had formally been the SDF.

131 John Postgate and Mary Postgate, A Stomach for Dissent (Staffordshire: Keele University Press, 1994), 108–14.

132 Marx, CWF (1921), 1.

133 Ibid., 4.

134 Ibid., 4.

135 Ibid., 5.

136 Marx, CWF (1933), 79.

137 Ibid., 81.

138 V.I. Lenin, State and Revolution, trans. Robert Service (London: Penguin, 1992), xxxix.

139 V.I. Lenin, The Paris Commune (London: Martin Lawrence, 1931), 3–4.

140 Ruff, Comrade, 176.

141 V.I. Lenin, State and Revolution (New York: International Publishers, 1935), Copyright.

142 Thomas March, The History of the Paris Commune of 1871 (London: Sonnenschein, 1896), vii–viii.

143 Edward Mason, The Paris Commune: An Episode in the History of the Socialist Movement (New York: Macmillan, 1930), vii.

144 Frank Jellinek, The Paris Commune of 1871 (London: Gollancz, 1971), 389–90.