Karl Marx oration 2021 March 14 2pm Lydia Samarbakhsh head of the international Department Fench Communist Party Liz Payne Chair of the Communist Party of Britain
Karl Marx oration 2021
Lydia Samarbakhsh head of the international Department of the Fench Communist Party
s The flag of the 143rd Battalion of the National Guard of the 1871 Paris Commune.
I would first like to send you greetings from the national leadership of the French Communist Party and its members, and to thank very warmly the Communist Party of Britain and Robert Griffiths, its secretary general, as well as Alex Gordon and the Marx Memorial Library for this initiative and the invitation extended to me to speak on behalf of the PCF.
This is an important meeting for all of us because if the ideas and the works of Marx have found in recent years a new vigour in the intellectual field, and particularly in the universities, they remain a source of inspiration and analysis of ever-growing importance for the women and men of our time whose aims go beyond simply understanding the nature of exploitation, domination and alienation of the existing capitalist order. This anniversary of the death of Karl Marx corresponds in this year 2021 to an important anniversary in the history of the international workers movement, the 150th anniversary of the Paris Commune. It also takes place in a global context of pandemic and health, economic, social and political crisis of unprecedented scale, a crisis which also
promotes awareness of the nature and meaning of the capitalist system, however we experience it across the world. In France, this 150th anniversary takes place a little less than three years after a movement that is also unprecedented and still continuing, that of the “yellow vests” which, although many did not realise it, took over the communard slogan of “Power to the people”. This also was repressed very violently on the orders of President Macron and his Minister of the Interior. For the French ruling classes – far more likely to be moved by the defacement of a public monument than by the eyes and arms torn off by the grenades and flashballs thrown at the demonstrators by the police – there is no question of commemorating and let alone celebrating the Commune. Thus one of our most famous historians, Pierre Nora, answered without hesitation on national radio the question “Should we commemorate the bicentenary of Napoleon and of the Paris Commune?. His answer was Yes Napoleon but not the Commune”. For this court intellectual on a promotional tour for a book of “memories”, the Commune has “lost its subversive charge”. Napoleon, on the other hand, “has a historic dimension. He brought revolution to the countries he conquered. He is the founding father of the revolutionary institutions that modernised Europe.” And the Commune. No historical dimension? No positive consequence. Let us note the nuance - not heir to the institutions or to the revolutionary scope of 1789 or 1793? ? Hence, the ideological battle is still raging on this 150th anniversary. It focuses on the historical front, on the knowledge of facts, their interpretation, and on the representation(s) of the Commune in terms how it is commemorated. The commemoration of the Paris Commune is therefore a political battle. The Commune retains its “propulsive force” as my comrade Patrick Le Hyaric, director of Humanite wrote. “In spite of everything, it decided basic issues immediately, issues which the Republicans would take a long time to implement and then not fully”. As Jean Jaures put it, the Commune, was “in its essence, the first great battle of labor against capital”. Today this battle composes the fields of acute confrontation between the forces of capital and the forces of labor in all its aspects – whether this is about social issues, modes and means of production or the
issue of power and democracy, whether it is about the place and the essential role of women in society and in the revolutionary movement – and the emancipatory potential of feminist struggles to overcome the capitalist order – whether it is about the demand for internationalism, secularism, human fraternity and peace. Karl Marx saw the Commune come into existence, fight for its survival and then be crushed in blood. Karl Marx drew lessons from it – as did many socialist and anarchist revolutionaries of the time. But Marx, more than any of his contemporaries and comrades in struggles, except Louise Michel, remains the most hated of revolutionaries by the bourgeois classes and the bourgeois state itself, even today. The same is true for the Paris Commune. Despite the 150 years that separate us from the Commune, it represents the revolutionary episode most feared by the French bourgeoisie and – like the Russian Revolution of 1917 – the most slandered by the bourgeoisies around the world. And this is because its power, its own state system, its class objectives, were determined by the people, by conscious thinking people, the popular “mass”. The Commune was initiated by the democratic decisions of the people of Paris on March 18, and it inaugurated a new revolutionary era, one of experiment, of positive transformation, of positive change, of scientific engagement. It marked the end of the ‘old governmental and clerical world, of militarism, of officialdom, of exploitation, of trading, of monopolies, of privileges, to which the proletariat owes its serfdom, the homeland its misfortunes and disasters.” These were the words of its Declaration to the French people of April 20, 1871. The bourgeoisie heard this declaration perfectly. The bourgeoisie answered and still answers with unvarnished class hatred. It does not need or want to pretend. Thus the former French ambassador to the United States opened the discussion on Twitter, two weeks ago: “The Paris Commune was an armed insurrection against an Assembly which had just been elected by universal suffrage. It burnt down the monuments of the city in a spirit of destruction and did so under the eye of the (German) enemy who drink champagne.” This is a far-fetched summary at the historical level. At the political level it has a specific goal that his colleague, the current French Ambassador to Ukraine, Étienne de Poncins, hastened to explain to those who had not yet understood: “The Commune is also a foreshadowing of Soviet communist totalitarianism, its rule through terror and the massacres it carried out. Politically, the Commune was the blueprint for Lenin for 1917.” Indeed, it is not wrong to see in it a “foreshadowing”. But not of “totalitarianism”. Of this there is no basis in historical facts. It is, however, of its most central achievement which Karl Marx put very clearly in his The Civil War in France: “The working class cannot be content with simply taking over the machinery of the state and operating it for its own sake. The political instrument of its enslavement cannot serve as a political instrument of
its emancipation.” From the moment of this statement, it became imperative for the ruling classes to superimpose the idea that violence, brutality, blood are the work of the Communards – and also of all the forces of labor who dare to challenge the established order, to seek to abolish it and attempt to build a new social order, to clear new democratic paths. And on the contrary that this bloodshed is not on the side of those who seek, by all means, to hinder this historic movement in order to preserve their privileges, and who for that end have killed and are ready to kill again. Of course, de Poncins’ tweet is used to justify, in the light of bourgeois morality, the ferocious repression against those who had dared “to storm the sky”. Of course, this only serves to remind us that it will always be so and to underline the idea that revolutionaries, the communists, of yesterday or today, are, in the light of the dominant ideology. , destroyers, not builders. This false characterisation by an ambitious diplomat has the essential objective of masking the most important fact. It was, as Marx noted, the pre-existing war wth Prussia: “Paris could not, however, be defended without arming its working class, without organizing it into an effective force and teaching it through the nature of the war itself. Armed Paris was the armed revolution. A victory for Paris over the Prussian aggressor would have been a victory for the French worker over the French capitalist and his state parasites.” The terrible repression by the Versaillese, of the old establishment, was of exceptional violence, and as inflicted on the Commune constituted a kind of relief for the bourgeois classes. They made it last as long as necessary to be reassured that they had removed all danger. They wanted to be vindicated by the blood of their adversaries like a macabre trophy: 10,000 dead in the Bloody Week of May, more than 4,500 deported to New Caledonia, nearly three hundred condemned to forced labour and a hundred condemned to death and executed. And the flight of tens of thousands of Communards into exile. This relentless violence of bourgeois power remains in reality poorly acknowledged by its representatives, even today. The bourgeoisie has to coat it with morality and with religion as well. The bourgeoisie built an imposing basilica overlooking Paris so that “the Parisians” but especially the bourgeoisie could remember “forever” the anguish that was theirs – but also, perhaps? its inhuman enjoyment of its attempt to exterminate any threat to its existence as a class. Even today, the French State, the heirs of Thiers must put down their class adversaries in order to block any alternative, to divide the forces of those who labour. They still must justify the violence then unleashed against this historic popular movement, against “this Sphinx who torments so much the bourgeois understanding” to use Marx's words. This is the violence they will systematically unleash as soon as their existence is called into question. This is undoubtedly why, to quote Marx, the 72 days of this “impromptu revolution, neither wanted nor prepared”, still resonate in our collective political memory like a “beacon”. H
Karl Marx oration 2021 Liz Payne Chair of the Communist Party of Britain
On the150th anniversary of the Paris Commune, we revisit that momentous event in awe and with deepest gratitude to the working class of the French capital who, in ten heroic weeks (18 March – 28 May 1871), changed forever the course of history. Writing to Ludwig Kugelmann on 17 April 1871, when the Commune was just one month old, Karl Marx stated: “The struggle of the working class against the capitalist class and its state has entered upon a new phase. Whatever the immediate outcome may be, a new point of departure of worldwide importance has been gained.” And, just hours after that first government of the working class had been so ruthlessly put down, when the blood of the many thousands of the murdered - women, men, and children – was still fresh on the ground of Paris, Marx completed his analytical address to the General Council of the First International, The Civil War in France. Writing on the 20th anniversary of the Commune in 1891, Engels praised this work as an outstanding example of Marx’s remarkable gift for grasping with profound insight the character, significance, and necessary consequences of great historical events while they were still happening or had only very recently taken place. In The Civil War in France, Marx showed how, for the first time, the working class had seized power and, in so doing, had demonstrated the imperative of destroying the capitalist state with its antiworker apparatus and replacing it with a workers’ state. “Wonderful” wrote Marx “was the change the Commune wrought in Paris!” - as he spelt out in detail the nature of the Commune, the multitude of measures taken directly in the interests of masses and their immediate impact on the quality of people’s lives. Marx also exposed the true nature of the reactionary ruling class of France and its government at Versailles, their horror as they came to understand that workers really could end forever the oppression and exploitation that kept the expropriators in place. They were the Commune’s “exterminators” and were “already nailed to that eternal pillory from which all the prayers of their priests will not avail to redeem them”.
The Civil War in France provided not only a penetrating analysis of the immediate past but the theoretical basis for class struggle going forward, for future revolution. Thousands bought copies and the work was translated into 10 major European languages. From this point, the name of Karl Marx, as both the leading voice of the First International and author of The Civil War was identified with the Commune and revolutionary struggle. It was a step change for Marx and Marxism. But the movement in Britain learned of the Commune not only from the analysis of Marx in Civil War in France and other writings but first-hand from the 3,500 who fled from the barricades and bloodbath - from arrest, torture, imprisonment, deportation and worse - to seek safety in Britain. Among them was Prosper-Olivier Lissagaray, participant in and historian of the Commune. His History of the Commune, completed in 1876, was “entirely revised and corrected” by Marx and served as the perfect companion to The Civil War. The Marx home was from the outset a magnet to the refugees and Marx devoted much time and money to organising practical support for the penniless, the injured and the traumatised. Yvonne Kapp in her biography of Eleanor Marx, characterised the house on Maitland Park Road in the months after the Commune as a “vortex”. This is what Jenny and Eleanor Marx arrived back from France to find in autumn 1871. They had been visiting their sister Laura in Bordeaux and were detained and released, their posture as ‘the Williams sisters’ leaving their true identities undetected. Jenny married the exiled Charles Longuet the following year, while Eleanor was for several years the fiancée of Commune historian Lissagaray, bringing the Commune quite literally into the heart of the Marx family. Despite the Paris bloodbath, many survivors and refugees saw the final defeat of capitalism as immanent - only depending on the awakening and unification of the working class to that end. One such was Eugene Pottier, elected to the Commune in March 1871, who, while in hiding in June that year, wrote the first version of the Internationale: “Tis the final conflict Let us unite and tomorrow The International Will be the human race.”
In the period immediately following the Commune the ruling classes of Europe lived in perpetual fear that the Commune’s ideas would take hold. In France, communards and their supporters were hunted relentlessly, and spies and agents pursued the exiles in Britain and across the continent. The ideological onslaught was immediate and huge. As Marx demonstrated in his writings on the role of the mass media, it did everything in its power to supress awareness of the true nature of the Commune and ensure that the working class was turned against the Communards and their achievements. This is why, from the begining, the political meetings of refugees and the huge annual events organised in London to commemorate the Commune were of such importance. They went ahead despite every obstacle put in their way by the authorities and soon took on an international character. In 1886, the 15th Commune anniversary at the South Place Institute drew representatives of the movement from France, Germany, Italy, and Russia. It was at this event that Eleanor Marx made what was certainly one of the finest speeches of her life on the role played by the women of Paris in spring 1871. Among the refugees in England, and known to Eleanor, were many women who had been involved in mass struggle for the first time in history - as leaders and organisers, providers of support and on the barricades. Marx described them as “the real women of Paris – heroic, noble and devoted”. In March 1887, William Morris wrote in Commonweal that the Commune had been subject to “slander, lies, hypocritical concealments, and false deductions.” But through celebrations, he insisted, the truth should be asserted and those who had not been touched by socialism could learn. Although the Commune was defeated at enormous cost in May 1871, the aims of its battle for the complete political and economic emancipation of workers lived on. Thus, Lenin wrote in the Rabochaya Gazeta in April 1911 on its 40th anniversary that the Commune is “immortal”. Comrades, the lessons learned from the Commune - the theoretical understanding of capitalist expropriation and of working-class struggle for a workers’ state, the knowledge and understanding of the practice of revolution – are as fresh and relevant today as they were in that Paris spring two lifetimes ago. The Commune has inspired and enabled the revolutionary transformation of societies, given substance to the aspiration of the peoples of the world and has, from the past, from history, bequeathed a promise of the future. Yes, Comrades Marx, Engels, and Lenin, – The Commune is immortal. Long live the Paris Commune! Long live international working-class struggle! Long live peace and socialism! . H
Internationale Written by Eugene Pottier after the murderous assault against the Paris Commune in 1871. The melody was added later by Pierre Degeyter. Arise, ye starvelings, from your slumbers Arise, ye criminals of want For reason in revolt now thunders And at last ends the age of cant Away with all your superstitions Servile masses, arise, arise We'll change forthwith the old conditions And spurn the dust to win the prize Then comrades, come, rally, And the last fight let us face The Internationale Unites the human race Then comrades, come, rally, And the last fight let us face The Internationale Unites the human race We peasants, artisans and others Enrolled among the sons of toil Let's change the earth henceforth for brothers Drive the indolent from the soil On our flesh too long has fed the raven We've too long been the vulture's prey But now farewell the spirit craven The dawn brings in a brighter day
An introduction to Marxism a series of five weekly online zoom classes This course of five weekly zoom classes running 7-830pm on Tuesdays focuses on the fundamentals of Marxism and its relevance to understanding and action. This course will cover an introduction to Marxist theory, applying it to a discussion of relevant issues today, such as: the changing nature of work and exploitation, austerity and the gig economy, racism, women’s oppression, class society, climate change, and revolutionary practice. The course is structured around four interrelated and overlapping themes: 1 Marxism and history. History is fundamental to everything - it deals with what exists, how it came to be, how it functions, and how it changes. Historical materialism is probably the most fundamental ‘discovery’ of Marx, providing a tool for analysing the whole of human development and especially the ‘laws of motion’ governing all forms of class society and capitalism today. Why is it so important and how does it help us challenge conventional accounts – of class, technology, racism, sexism and religious belief today? 2 Marxist philosophy. Philosophy addresses fundamental questions about existence, knowledge, values, ethics, mind, and language, both in the abstract and concretely (as in ‘natural philosophy’), through the methods of science. Dialectical materialism provides an analytical alternative to academic ‘idealist’ philosophy as well as to commonplace views of human nature and our relationship to the natural world. What’s its relevance today to understanding ourselves as human animals, and to the future of the planet on which we live? 3 Marxism and economics. Marxist economics – perhaps, better, ‘political economy’ - addresses questions to do with how the goods and services on which we depend are produced, by whom, and who benefits – questions which are normally ignored by ‘orthodox’ economics which treats the market as an inviolable ‘given’. Its analysis of the nature of commodity production in terms of value, price and profit includes the changing nature of exploitation of people as workers and consumers, the role of economic crises and why workers appear to ‘consent’ to their exploitation. 4 Marxism and revolution. A Marxist perspective is central to understanding the role of the state and how the ruling class retains power. But how can we secure a society ‘for the many’? Can capitalism be reformed or must it be overthrown, if so what should replace it? What do we mean by ‘revolution’? Can we learn from the experience of socialist revolutions past and present and – given the results of Britain’s most recent parliamentary elections - what are the prospects for socialism and a future classless, communist society? A fifth theme –Marxism, ecology and the environment runs as a thread through all four topics. This is particularly important given the growing recognition over the past half-century that the crisis of capitalism is not just a social, economic and cultural crisis; it is also an environmental crisis which threatens the continued existence of our own species – amongst others. The course is structured around five weekly sessions, each starting at 7pm and each divided into two parts as follows: 1 Tuesday 9 March: Introduction to the course // Topic 1: Marxism & history 2 Tuesday 16 March: On-line workshop // Topic 2: Marxism & philosophy 3 Tuesday 23 March: On-line workshop // Topic 3: Marxism & economics 4 Tuesday 30 March: On-line workshop // Topic 4: Marxism & revolution 5 Tuesday 6 April: On-line workshop: // Conclusion and feedback The workshop sessions will each consist of a live discussion around some questions to be selected by the group at the end of the previous week’s topic presentation.
37a Clerkenwell Green, Marx Memorial Library & Workers School, London, EC1R 0DU https://www.marx-memorial-library.org.uk/event/264 Contact m.jump@marx-memorial-library.org.uk Phone: 02072531485
Communist Party of Britain
Marx Memorial Library & Workers’ School
THE COMMUNIST PARTY was founded 100 years ago from the unification of the marxist and revolutionary workers’ organisations which traced their lineage from the International Working Man’s Association and the Communist League of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. The Great October Socialist Revolution in Russia in 1917 had a tremendous impact on the working class in Britain and across the world. There was a great movement of solidarity with the Russian workers, against military intervention by the imperialist powers. In the decades that have followed the Communist Party has fought both for the immediate demands of the working class and for its conquest of state power. The Communist Party believes that socialist revolution and the construction of a fundamentally new type of society to replace capitalism is essential for the future of humanity and our planet. In all three countries of Britain, capitalism has become a barrier to balanced economic development, environmental security, social justice and meaningful democracy. The big business profit system has to be replaced by a new system – socialism – based on mass participation in decision making, social ownership of the economy, democratic planning and solidarity. But fundamental change will also require a transfer of political power, taking it out of the hands of a small number of monopoly capitalists whose interests dominate our society. Such a revolutionary process will have to be led by the working class – the producers of society's wealth – at the head of an alliance of forces representing the interests of the people as a whole.
MARX HOUSE was built in 1738 as a Welsh Charity school. It educated boys and later a few girls – the children of Welsh artisans living in poverty in Clerkenwell. Gradually the intake became too large and the school moved to new premises in 1772. After this the building was divided into separate workshops one of which became the home to the London Patriotic Society from 1872 until 1892. The Twentieth Century Press occupied 37a and 38, and expanded into 37 by 1909 – thereby returning the House to single occupancy for the first time since its days as a charity school. The Twentieth Century Press was founded by the Social Democratic Federation as printer for its journal Justice. It was the first socialist Press in Clerkenwell. An early benefactor was William Morris, who guaranteed the rent of the Patriotic Club to the Twentieth Century Press. During its time in Clerkenwell Green, the Twentieth Century Press produced several of the earliest English editions of the works of Marx and Engels. The Twentieth Century Press remained at the building until 1922. Lenin was exiled in London and worked in the building from April 1902 to May 1903. During this period he shared the office of Harry Quelch, the director of the Twentieth Century Press, from there he edited and printed the journal ISKRA (The Spark), which was smuggled into Russia. The office is still preserved and open to visitors. In 1933, the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Karl Marx, a delegate meeting comprising trade unionists, veteran socialists belonging to the Labour Party and Communist Party, and representatives of the Labour Research Department and Martin Lawrence Publishers Ltd., considered setting up a permanent memorial to him. That year also saw the Nazis in Germany burning books. In these circumstances the meeting resolved that the most appropriate memorial would be a Library. Thus the Marx Memorial Library and Workers School (as it was then known) was established at 37a Clerkenwell Green that year. Study classes, held in the evenings, became the distinguishing feature of the Workers’ School, which was divided into faculties of science, history and political economy. The Library expanded to occupy the whole building over the years. The premises achieved Grade II listed building status in 1967 and in 1969 the façade was restored to the way it had originally looked in 1738. During further refurbishments in 1986, tunnels were discovered underneath the Library. Their origins are obscure but they significantly pre-date the building. Since its establishment the Marx Memorial Library has been the intellectual home of generations of scholars interested in studying Marx and Marxism. The Library is home to an impressive number and variety of archives and collections including the full run of the Daily Worker and Morning Star, The International Brigade Archive, Bernal Peace Library, the James Klugmann Collection and an extensive photograph Library. As a registered charity we rely on your support to continue our work as one of the foremost institutions serving the British labour movement and working people, in preserving their past and in providing practical education for the future.
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Marx Memorial Library & Workers' School 37a Clerkenwell Green, London, EC1R 0DU Tel: +44(0) 207 253 1485 m.jump@marx-memorial-library.org.uk https://www.marx-memorial-library.org.uk