Kim Claudette M. Caringal

Caringal, Kim Claudette M. January 31,- Sociology 178 WFX Memo on Karl Marx’s The Civil War in France and Critique of the Gotha Program Marx’s two essays on two particularly significant historical events provide an apt recounting and emphasis of events and ideas that led into the inability of the involved parties to fully encapsulate the ideals of a socialist society. While there were, of course, the necessary commendations made towards the monumental, however short-lived, success of the Paris Commune, and the sufficiently socialistic provisions scattered across Lassalle’s draft of the party platform, Marx brings up several noteworthy areas of critique. First off, Marx’s The Civil War in France gives a succinct account of the events that ripened the conditions for the rise of the Commune. As Louis Napoleon’s regime gradually degraded and, in essence, destroyed itself in its attempts to quell the resistance, the republicans scrambled to maintain power thru the centralised government in Paris. With the peasantry still in favor of a more peaceful approach to defending their territory, Thiers was elected as president by the National Assembly. Marx routinely describes Thiers as a political opportunist, affiliating himself with whichever class or personality was currently perched at the top of the social hierarchy. Thiers, reactionary as he was, fled to Versailles with who remained of his allies after hearing that his troops reverted to the workers’ cause instead of executing a mob of insurgents. Thiers’ retreat to Versailles, leaving the central government vacant, was what finally spurred the start of the Paris Commune, establishing a society more socialistic than the world had ever witnessed beforehand. This monumental victory, of course, did not last long, and the communards found themselves compromised by their lack of organization and errors in judgement; seventy-two days after the Paris Commune was set in place, Thiers’ army marched right back into their gates and recaptured the city. So where did they go wrong? There are several reasons on which Marx elaborates on, which I think can be summed up in the following points: that they failed to secure the Bank of France and keep in check the lingering bourgeoisie presence; that they were too reluctant and cautious – though this wariness is arguably not unfounded – to organize leadership in the government; that they failed to properly address the divides between the three main political factions that made up the Commune; and lastly, and perhaps most importantly, that they simply needed more time to do all of these vital steps to properly transition to, and secure the foundations of, a socialist society. These points are where The Civil War in France intersects with the Critique of the Gotha Program, as I understand it – there was, essentially, an ideological disconnect with the figures involved in establishing a socialist society, and the execution of these ideals thereafter, whether on paper or on ground. The Critique of the Gotha Program is popular, I think, not only because Marx himself refuted Lassalle’s supposedly Marxist provisions, but of how controversial it must have been to be presented with a socialist party’s platform draft that was more reflective of bourgeois tendencies – and, as Marx points out in several provisions in the draft, a backwards, feudalistic ideal – than it was of socialism. Why, then, did Lassalle’s Gotha Program gain so much traction so as to constitute its possible adoption as the party platform? Why, and how, in the first place, did Lassalle garner sufficient popularity so as to authorize him to write such important documents if his idea of a socialist state is so skewed that Marx questions even his ability to adequately assess social realities?