The Civil War in France
1922 German edition of "The Civil War in France
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| Author | Karl Marx |
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| Subject | Paris Commune |
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Publication date
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June 13, 1871 |
| Pages | 35 |
"The Civil War in France" (German: "Der Bürgerkrieg in Frankreich") was a pamphlet written by Karl Marx, as an official statement of the General Council of the International on the character and significance of the struggle of the Communards in the Paris Commune.
Between the middle of April and the end of May 1871, London resident Karl Marx collected and compiled English, French, and German newspaper clippings on the progress of the French civil war, which pitted the radical workers of Paris against conservative forces from outside the city. Marx had access to French publications supported by the Commune as well as various bourgeois periodicals published in London in English and French. Marx also had access to personal interpretations of events passed along by several leading figures in the Commune and associates such as Paul Lafargue and Peter Lavrov.
Marx originally intended to write an address to the workers of Paris and made such a motion to the meeting of the governing General Council of the International on March 28, 1871, a proposal unanimously approved. Further developments in France made Marx think that the document should be instead directed to the working class of the world, and at the April 18 meeting of the General Council, he passed along that suggestion by noting his desire to write on the "general tendency of the struggle." The proposal was approved, and Marx began writing the document. Main writing on the publication seems to have taken place between May 6 and May 30, 1871, with Marx writing the original document in English.
The first edition of the pamphlet, a slim document of just 35 pages, was published in London on about June 13, 1871 as "The Civil War in France: Address of the General Council of the International Working-Men's Association." Only 1000 copies of the first edition were printed, and the pamphlet quickly sold out, to be followed by a less expensive second edition with a print run of 2000. A third English edition, containing a number of corrections of errors, appeared later in that same year. The pamphlet was translated into French, German, Russian, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Flemish, Croatian, Danish, and Polish and published both in newspapers and in pamphlet form in various countries in 1871 and 1872 . The German translation was rendered by Marx's longtime associate, Friedrich Engels, and the first German publication was serialized in the newspaper Der Volkstaat in June-July 1871 followed by Der Vorbote in August-October 1871. A separate pamphlet edition was also published by the Volkstaat in Leipzig in that same year.
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